Godless
by LoweFantasy
Summary: The spell over Hanna's memory and body disguising her as human are broken when she imprints on Link. Dismayed at her failure to hide her child, her mother throws her out, and Hanna finds herself as an unwanted creation of gods who were defeated by the goddesses. She is the last of her kind, hunted by the goddesses, and mated to a man who might already be in love with someone else.
1. Star

**Yes, finally back to doing a Legend of Zelda fanfic! Same thing applies, an update once a week, this story will be finished, and please feel free to put in your input. **

Godless

By Lowe Fantasy

Chapter 1

I met the man who broke my mother's most carefully weaved spell outside a circus tent. Inside a huge cage had been set up, shadowed by the striped walls of the tent, and framed by wooden depictions of smiling moons and suns.

Initially, we went because the guy who ran the place was brother to my one friend, Chenise, and crush to my other friend, Donna. I didn't blame Donna, really. The guy had a very nice face, a white, toothy smile, and tend to wore outfits that showed off his perfect abs. He intimidated me though. Most cute guys did. Especially the ones who knew they were cute, as Chenise's brother did. Just because I was intimidated didn't mean I was shy, by all means. I joked and laughed with the rest while Donna blushed and tried her best at flirting, which Chenise's brother accepted eagerly, though sincerely I didn't know.

He asked us to wait outside and draw in customers, but what we really ended up doing was crowding to the side of the door to tease Donna about Chenise's brother.

"Why do you always call him 'Chenise's brother?' His name is Purlo."

"Because I keep forgetting." I said, shrugging as though to say, 'don't blame me,' though I really had no excuse.

And the look on Donna's lightly freckled face told me she knew it. "I don't believe you."

"I don't believe you either." said Chenise. "I mean, did you get a look at those abs?"

I made a face at her. "Eww, he's your brother!"

"Doesn't mean I can't see." she said. "I mean, what a face."

"And have you seen him when he's in the cage? Oh wow."

"Yeah, he's pretty great." I did my best to sound sincere, though in all reality, I'd rather be somewhere else, maybe up near the castle doors people-watching. I had a perfect place where I could watch without being notice while listening to the different musicians that often practiced nearby for tips.

Then I saw him. He was dressed in green with a funny, long green hat. The most beautiful sword was sheathed over his shoulder, or at least, the purple hilt was, as I couldn't see the rest. I thought him short for a guy, though he could be a little taller than me, and he had a nice face.

Though it had been the look that had distracted me. It looked strained, and something wild burned in his eye, like a beast.

But, for some reason, I wasn't scared. Instead, I felt worried. What had happened to him to give him such a ferocious look.

"Hey! You in the green!"

He paused instantly, as though he was frequently called out like that. It only took him a second to find me through the crowd walking through the street. I waved at him, gesturing him over. He hesitated, then made his way over to me.

Chenise and Donna had noticed by now.

"Hanna, what are you doing?"

I didn't answer, because I really didn't have one. But then they spotted the guy.

"Oh my..." whispered Chenise.

He kept his distance, though stood close enough to have a relatively normal conversation.

"Yeah?"

"You should try out this game my friend's brother's set up," I pointed to the tent. "You look like you've been under a lot of stress lately, and some fun will help clear your mind. It shouldn't take too much time, and it's only ten rupees."

He blinked those wolf-like eyes and glanced at my friends, who had slid in behind me, as though afraid. He sighed.

"Sorry, I..."

Then he paused, as though listening to something. I thought I saw his shadow flicker out of the corner of my eye, but when I looked it was just an ordinary shadow.

He rolled his eyes, to what, I didn't know. "Sure. Why not. It's just inside this tent, right?"

I nodded and he stepped past us and into the darkness of the tent.

Chenise and Donna squealed.

"Those eyes!"

"Those arms!"

"His physic must be so perfect under all those clothes!"

"Goodness, Hanna, you know how to spot them!"

I shoved Chenise aside playfully, "We're suppose to be out here getting customers, or have you forgotten?"

She wrinkled her nose at me. "I have been attracting customers. Just standing here and being my beautiful self is enough." She flicked her short hair that she had dyed green in an act of rebellion. I told her it made it look like she was growing grass on her head and she didn't talk to me for a week.

"And I'm just here to help out the wonderful Purlo." said Donna, putting her chin in the air. It made the tall bob of red hair on her head bounce.

So, we weren't doing anything useful...

I sighed and rubbed my hand down my eyebrows. "In that case, I'm going home. I got cleaning to do." And people-watching.

"Aw, you're no fun!" whined Chenise.

"Why do you always have to be all business and no cool." said Donna.

"It's called being an adult. We aren't twelve anymore."

"But we're not fifty either," Chenise said with a frown. "And how do you expect to attract a husband huddle in the house or in that dark little corner of yours by the gates? Speaking of which, are you ever going to do anything with your hair?"

"What's wrong with it?" I asked, putting a hand to it. It was thick, long, and so black it was almost blue.

"All you did was tied it into some garish knot on the back of your head." she said. "And black is such a boring color. Why don't you bleach it? Or dye it more blue?"

Donna's eyes went big. "Ooo, yeah, more blue!"

"Forget it, I'm going inside."

They 'awed' and cooed after me as though I had denied a bunch of ten-year-olds ice cream and followed after me. I didn't care if they did or not, but my mind had yet to leave the young man in green.

Inside, Purlo was just opening the door on the cage for him. The grin on his face reminded me why I wasn't as crazy about him as Donna. He looked less than honest. One would even say greedy.

And the look also made my stomach drop. I had just lured that poor boy in here. Purlo would probably eat him alive for all he was worth. Ugh, how could I be so stupid!

Purlo closed the door, lifted his watch high in the air, and yelled out start.

And from there I watched as the handsome young man pulled out strange claw-and-chain contraptions on his hands and started zooming around the cage.

Our jaws dropped collectively.

The little plastic, floating lights Purlo had obtained while traveling around with the circus were all at his feet, five whole seconds before the ending time.

For the first time, I started screaming and cheering with my friends like a lunatic. I didn't even know why. All I felt was relief. I hadn't scammed him, never mind the fact it was Purlo doing the scam in the first place.

The boy glanced over at us and blushed. It hit me then that he was handsome—very handsome—but the pinkening to his cheeks and long ears told me that, unlike Purlo, he had somehow hadn't let it go to his head.

Purlo, who hadn't expected anyone to win, ended up giving the boy an old quiver he had in the back from a co-worker of his. The boy took it though, taking the time to discard his own quiver, which was half the size of Purlo's old one, and started slipping in arrows.

Chenise started hissing his name like a snake. Purlo looked over, confused, and looking more than a little annoyed.

"His name." she hissed. "Ask him his name."

Purlo looked to the ceiling, but managed to push one of his toothy grins onto his face. "What's your name, new star!"

"Link." said the boy quietly. "And, uh, thanks for the game."

"Come back again and I'll have a new game specifically designed just for you." Then, in an undertone that wasn't entirely as quiet as it should be, for even I heard it. "Let's see you conquer that one, heh heh."

Yeah. The 'heh heh's really did it for him. You know how to pick'em, Donna.

My stomach clenched as I watch him heft on his new quiver and turned to leave. While Donna and Chenise finished swooning, I caught up to him outside. After the dark tent, the sun almost blinded me and I almost ran into him head first.

"Link?"

He paused and met my eye. The image of a wolf crossed my mind—a huge wolf. Grey and silver, muzzle to the sky, and Link's same blue eyes closing in a silent howl.

But then there was just Link, the young man, with a sunkissed complexion and golden hair framing his face. He cocked his head to the side.

"You okay?"

I frowned. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"You look a little dazed there for a minute."

I felt my neck heat up. "Oh, no, it's nothing. Sometimes I just see things when I look at people. I saw you as a wolf there for a minute, how crazy is that?"

His eyes widened a bit, but he chuckled, sort of tersely. "Yeah. Pretty crazy."

Aw great. What he was really saying was he though I was pretty crazy. Way to go freaking out a cute guy, I really needed to keep my mouth shut.

Best to get what I needed done.

"I just wanted to apologize," I said, folding my hands before me. "I saw Purlo in there and I don't think he's being completely honest, I'm sorry. I mean, he seemed to do the cage game fine, I never stopped to think..."

Link smiled softly. "It's okay. I sorta cheated too."

"No you didn't! There was nothing in the rules against...against...?"

"Clawshots."

"Yeah! Nothing against clawshots! And Purlo needed some humbling anyways, if you asked me. Don't tell Chenise though, she's the one with the green hair."

"Green hair?" He then looked up and a funny look came on his face. "Why'd she dye her hair green?"

"Because she wanted to become a tree."

"Hanna!"

I flinched and Link looked like he wanted to laugh, but didn't know if it was polite too. I turned around slowly to meet my angry friend. Donna was still in the tent, probably 'comforting' Purlo.

"What? I was just kidding."

"Why can't you just be supportive like...like...a good friend!"

"Well, Chenise, you did dye your hair green. I thought a good friend would be honest with you."

Her eyes teared up. Instantly I crumbled.

"Aw, Chenise..."

"I'll just be on my way." said Link.

Chenise's tears vanished and she went into full-blown fangirl moment. "Oh my gosh, it's him! I can't believe I didn't see you!"

She squealed loudly, clutching her hands to her chin and pressing her knees together.

"You were so great in there! I've never seen anyone so cool in my life! Please say you'll go on a date with me, please!"

"Uh-"

"I'll even play! There's this great restaurant in the square that serves the most delicious cake ever! Unless you're not a sweets person, than that's really fine, there's these sandwiches with mutton and-"

"No." he said solidly, though he grew flustered when the green-haired girl froze. "I mean, thank you, a lot, but I need to be on my way. I got some really important things to do."

I thought I heard a snicker somewhere and once more saw a flicker out of the corner of my eye. I looked down to his shadow again, but once more saw nothing out of the ordinary.

She wilted. "Will, maybe when you're not busy?"

"I don't know when I'll be in town next."

"Then where do you live, I'll-"

"Chenise." I said. "You're being a stalker."

Her face flushed. Another reason why green hair was a horrible choice. Red and green, yeah.

"Bye." he said, sounding more than a little awkward.

The last I saw of him was his shield and green hat vanishing around the corner. Chenise had more than enough angry words for me after that, after which she begged me for comfort, but all I remember was thinking I saw a dark, shadow like imp come up from under his feet and lean in to speak into his ear. I shook it off, wondering if I was starting to go crazy. I had always ignored the images I got when I met people. It wasn't normal. I learned that when not too long ago my mother had given me that look she often gave when I started talking about father. The scary one. The one that was usually followed by breaking pots.

But I couldn't get the wolf-boy off my mind. There was something about him. He had done something in that cage worth far more than a quiver, and I wanted to know why he had so much suppressed fury in his eyes.


	2. Godless

**Not quite sure what I'm doing here...**

Chapter 2

I dreamed of him. One would think that sounds romantic, but they were strange dreams. At first they were him as a wolf, running across Hyrule field, teeth bared, eyes burning with that same intensity. I saw the weird little imp on his back, but this time it had flaming orange hair, a strange stone mask, and an oddly shaped, black and blue-white body. I woke up the next morning wondering what kind of strange crush I had gotten.

The next night he wasn't a wolf, just a man, but in a strange place made of black, block like buildings, a strange amber sky full of shadowy clouds, and a land that seemed to be shedding black scales that fell up and up into that same sky. He had his sword in hand, and the blade was just as beautiful as the hilt, aglow like the sun and shedding light in great arcs above his adversaries, which were gruesome, horrible black creatures.

I woke up the next day wondering how a crush could give you nightmares.

But each night was a new dream, some long, filled with harrowing battles of black beasts and his shining sword, always with the imp within his shadow (perhaps that had been why I hadn't seen her?). And some were short, just brief glimpses of him sitting against a wall, or even outside of the shadowy realm with his head bowed before a campfire, shoulders slumped.

My daytime life started making less and less sense to me. Why were these girls my best friends, anyways? Why hadn't I stopped Purlo by now from scamming people? Where had my father gone, and why was my mother and I all alone? How were we keeping this house, and why hadn't I ever wondered what mom did for a living? What did I do for a living? Had I always been cleaning this little one room house? Always cooking these meals? Did I really like cheese?

Mother noticed me drawing in before my friends did. Though I didn't know where my friends had gone. I hadn't seen them for days...hadn't I?

"Hanna?"

I understood her entire question in the way she spoke my name.

"I've just been having some...nightmares." I said.

She crouched down in front of me, letting the scorpion tail of her long black braid touch the floor. She didn't move, waiting, her beautiful, pale hands between her knees.

I sighed. "They're always of this boy I met a few weeks ago. In them he turns into a wolf and fights monsters. He's on some quest—some quest to save us all. But," I hesitated. "Mom, I didn't realize we needed saving, or anything like that. Sure the royal family's been holed up in the castle, sure there's something strange going on, but-"

In a flash a memory I didn't know I had came to mind. A memory of another nightmare, filled with shadowy beasts and surreal amber skies.

I had unconsciously hugged my knees in tightly and scooted up closer against the wall. The fire besides me crackled. But still, my mother waited, expression patient. I looked around at my home again, which, after weeks of nightmares, now looked so strange. My legs started to tremble and I clutched them together to try and keep them still, but then my hands just started shaking.

"Mother, what happened to us?" Hot tears slid down my cheeks. "What's happening to me?"

Her white hands came out, shushing me, smoothing my hair and telling me that she loved me, no matter what. I wept in painful confusion.

"Hanna," she said. "Hanna."

The sound of my name calmed me down. That's right. I was Hanna. I was Hanna still.

And then I fell asleep to the crackling of the fire, wrapped up in the quilt from my mother's bed.

As I did every time I slept, whether it was a night or in the day, I dreamed of Link. This time he was inside the castle, a place I'd never been into, and I could feel his awe as my own at the immensity of it. Who had built the ceiling so high? How had they built it? What was all this space even for?

And then came the gut clenching horror as I watched him walled in with orange, transparent barriers and forced to do battle with waves upon waves of monsters. They were horrible things, with overlarge jaws filled with teeth, dripping with spit, and swinging to the steps of their unruly gait. They hacked at him, sawed at him, and though his swordsmanship made them look like children they outnumbered him fifteen to one, making it inevitable that their blades should steal a taste at least once.

The imp urged him on, floating after him, whispering to him of the princess, calling out the name 'Zelda.'

More beasts. More swords. More dark stains against his green.

And then he reached the top of the castle—up and up into the throne room, where a hulking man with hair the color of flames waited. He had a strong jaw, and his frightening, dark eyes seemed to see the spectral me watching from the sides.

"He will die." he said to me—_to me_—totally ignoring Link and the imp before him. "They both shall die."

I awoke with a start and a wail. Mother came stumbling from her bed, calling my name.

"He's going to kill him! He's going to kill him!"

"Kill who? Hanna, calm down."

"We have to do something! Mother, the top of the castle, we have to do something! Isn't there anyone?"

She frowned. "Hanna, it was just a dream."

And as I looked into her face, framed by raven hair, so like my own, something snapped inside me.

For the first time, I saw her. The strange perspicacity that had showed to me a wolf when I looked at Link and so many other things whenever I looked at anyone else showed me a wondrous being, with wings out her shoulders, spread wide to the sky, black feathers reaching up and up like fingers. Her eyes had gone blue and wide, and I could see an endless expanse in them.

And we didn't always live here.

Pain tore threw me, and somehow I knew it had to do with Link.

"Mother!" I cried.

She jumped to the kitchen, breaking a bowl in her fervor. I was shaking harder now, and something hot was bubbling in me. It hurt, it hurt so bad, I thought blood would come out of my mouth at any moment.

Mother dropped down in front of me.

"Drink this."

"He's going to kill him!"

"Drink this and then we'll go help him. Just drink this."

I didn't know what she tipped into my mouth. But it was bitter and sweet at the same time and numbed my throat on the way down. My tongue tingled. Almost instantly my vision blurred.

"Mother," But my voice was growing faint. "Mommy."

"It's okay, I'll look after him, but you must stay here."

"But you told me...so it's not a..."

I slipped back into unconsciousness. The sound of my heartbeat pounding in my ears was the last thing I heard.

The next morning I somehow found myself out of the house, with my hair brushed back into a ponytail, and my two friends before me as though I had never been missing.

"Did you hear? Did you hear? The castle's was overthrown last night."

"Yeah! But then some guy came in—just one guy—and everything was all right! The soldiers are back in and everything!"

"Though some of them were killed by some weird monsters, but no one knows where they came from. It's like it all was just some bad dream."

The words 'bad dream' rankled something inside of me, but I just smiled. I felt like I was in a daze. What just happened? Shouldn't I be somewhere right now? Didn't someone need me?

"Do you really believe them? Do you really think that one guy could have done all that?"

"I couldn't even believe we didn't notice it. We were all sound asleep!"

"I did hear a boom sometime this morning, though."

"Oh my gosh, from where?"

"The castle of course!"

Purlo stepped out of the tent then, fingers on his chin in a dashing pose, earning a squirm and squeal from both Donna and Chenise. Behind us the townspeople went about their usual bustle, except I could hear the swapping of the same story Donna and Chenise shared and nervous glances towards the castle.

"Now now, ladies, you should be attracting guests, not swapping rumors."

"But it's true! I heard it from a soldier by the gate!"

"Whether it is or so, time is money." he rubbed his chin again, looking towards the castle. "I wonder when that fellow will come back, though, whatever his name. I have a challenge waiting just for him and I want to see his face when he fails."

Something tickled in my memory. Who was he talking about? No one had ever beaten the cage-

And then it returned to me. Link, the dreams, mother-

What the hell was I doing here? What had happened? How could I be out in front of the tent, just like that day, without nothing changing? And why hadn't Donna and Chenise said anything about me being sick for the past few days? Didn't they care? We had been friends since...since...

I couldn't remember.

That was enough to send me in a mad dash towards the castle. They called out for me, but I barely heard them.

What was going on?

Guards stopped me at spear point at the gates.

"No one can enter with permission." he said.

"If you have an emergency-"

I latched onto the handle of his spear, making the soldier jump.

"The guy—the guy who went into the castle-"

"You mean that swordsman?"

My heart jumped. "Yes! Him! Did you see him come back out?"

The guard frowned and exchanged a glance with his comrade.

"No. No, I can't say I did." he said, his calm rubbing me wrong in so many ways. "Why? Did you know him?"

But I was already pushing past him, falling into a dead sprint through the walk way and to the closed doors up ahead.

"Halt! Miss!"

And just as I was wondering if I would be able to open the massive double doors blocking the way to the castle, one opened and my mother stepped out, dark, beautiful, and with her sharp eyes cutting off my intentions.

I stumbled to a stop.

"He is alright." she said, though she had that scary look again. The one she always wore when I talked about father. "You should be with your friends."

"They aren't my friends."

"What are you talking about? You're with them all the time."

I didn't say anything. I didn't know what to say. My life had flipped upside down so quickly I couldn't even tell which way was up anymore.

I could hear the clank of the soldiers armor as they caught up to me.

"Mother," I said, unable to control the tremor in my voice. "Mother, what's going on? We haven't always lived here, I know that, but I can't remember why, and it's like everything around me—Donna, Chenise, our house—like it's all some big lie. And, inside me, there's something..."

She waited, but I couldn't find a word to explain it.

The two guards surrounded us as best as two guards could. They ushered us down the walkway together, chastising us for lacking permission, asking questions I didn't hear.

I tried looking back, to find some sort of clue to what was going on. All I could remember, though, was that all this started the day I had met him. The day I had looked into his eyes and seen the wolf there.

"What does Link have to do with this?" I asked.

We had reached the fountain at the town's center. The guards had peeled off at the gate and people bustled about us, all noise, all movement, and somewhere behind me I could hear the musician singing at the top of his lungs as the lyre tried to keep up with him.

My mother's face, though, was aghast. She looked as though she were about to cry, and another memory tickled at the back of my mind. One where my mother screamed at an empty, blue sky while tears ran down her face.

She put a hand to my cheek. I could look into her eyes without looking up, I realized. When had my mother gotten so short?

"Oh, Hanna." she said. "This isn't right. I thought we could start over, become something else, I thought I could give you a better life, but I guess there's just no denying our blood." She shook her head and dropped her hand. "Let's go back home. We can't do this here."

By the time we got home, my back had started to ache and I felt feverish. I almost walked into a wall, which got my mother's attention, and she sat me down on my bed.

"You're going to feel a little sick as your body changes back, but the spell isn't going to break all at once," she said. "It's a blood spell, a deep one, one that changed you down to your core. But from here on out it's going to disintegrate and your true form is going to come through, and you will be as good as dead."

I felt like I should understand what she was saying, but the memories were still blurry, and the pain in my back, and now in my head, weren't helping. "Why?"

"Because our gods have long been conquered by the goddesses of this land, and our kind have been abandoned for thousands of years." Tears leaked down my mother's face. "We are the last, Hanna. The very last. And the moment your traits come through, this world will turn against you and hunt you down." She closed her eyes and turned away from me.

"I don't understand." I said. "What did we do?"

"We were not meant to survive the battle of the gods. As creations of the gods who were enemy to the goddesses, we are considered to be pests, even enemies as well." There came a clack of pots against pans as she tried to busy herself. "That is why, after your father died, I gave up all of my power and my freedom to lock away those traits and help us to live as Hylians for the rest of our days." She turned around, her eyes bright, but dry. "You will remember everything in time, the spell is weakening." Mother's hands were shaking, and I could see her knees had begun to tremble. She collapsed. "Not that it matters. Not that anything matters at all."

Despite the pain and confusion I was in, I got off the bed and ran to her side. In the end, even if I was some freak from hell, my mother would always be the same. Though her words sounded farfetched, I knew they were true. I could sense the start of the black in my memory, where my days as the human Hanna started and whatever I had been before ended.

"Mother, it will be okay,"

"No." she said softly. "No, this is the end."

The finality to her voice made me shudder. She was canceling out. I couldn't hear anything of her heart anymore. It frightened me more than the nightmares ever had.

"Mother?"

"This is the end," she said again. "Now, the only choice left to you is how you want to meet it. You have your options, now that you've imprinted on a human."

"Imprinted?"

"The old one's would say it's the gods' way of leading you to your soul mate," she snorted. "But we have no gods. Your body's just desperately mated itself to someone, shame it's a thing that can't give you the same back. He'll love someone else, your body will know, and you will die."

I blanched. "Mother, where is this all coming from? What am I?"

But she went on as though she didn't hear me.

"But ah yes, the options. You can either wait here to die when he finds a lover, or you can go after him and at least die knowing you tried, for you will die."

I pulled my hands away. "Mother, don't say things like that."

But something cracked and bubbled, and in that moment I realized it was her laughing, a broken, harsh cackle. "No, you will die. Once the spell is gone, the goddesses will find you and kill you, just like they did to the rest of us."

She flung back her black head, tears pouring down the sides of her face once more, a crazy, shaking grin bouncing across her cheeks. "I should have known there was no escaping a god."

I backed off, cold as ice. Mother kept laughing, eyes wide to the ceiling, loose hair from her braid sticking to the tear tracks on her neck.

"Mother, please, stop talking like that."

"Just go off and die," she said, "my little love, my little moon, I don't want you to suffer when you die. I don't want it to hurt."

"Please, we can redo the spell, I still haven't remembered anything, and I hardly know Link-"

"Stop talking. The power of an imprint was enough to break a spell never meant to be broken, that should tell you enough." She dropped her head, like a puppet whose string hand been cut, and gave me that unstable, bouncing grin. "You will die. That human will fall in love and you will die, even if you never see him again. What a creative end to our species."

I found my back pressed against the cool stucco of the wall, staring as my mother's head lolled about, cackling, crying, and I tried to resist the urge to throw up. I was sweating, beads of it, all down my sides and legs. It just wouldn't click that watching a guy fly around in stupid Chenise's stupid brother's circus tent had started all this.

When my mother finally staggered to her feet, evening had fallen and neither of us had eaten all day. I couldn't trace back the time that had passed between us, and my body ached worse than ever. Mother stumbled to her bed and pulled out a bag from underneath.

"Here," she rasped, throwing it to me. "Go get yourself a horse before everyone closes up."

I pulled out a big, heavy, dark brown cloak, some boots, and a bag of money. I didn't have to ask why she was giving me these things.

"What about you?"

"The opportunities are vast," she said. "The spell hasn't broken on me, so maybe I'll just live to an old age, poisoning creeks, slitting the throats virgins-this place is terribly peaceful, if you ask me."

I frowned. "You're not serious, are you?" Though why should I be surprised? The whole world as I knew it was going to pot.

"Just go." Mother snapped. "Go die already. I can't look at your face any longer."

Something irreparable broke within me. "B-but, mother," I choked on a breath. "_Mommy_-"

"I said go! Now! Run until you die! That's all I have left to give you."


	3. Run

Chapter 3

The dappled gray stallion whinnied in protest beneath me. He was too old for this speed, and I knew it, but the night closing in on me came with the cry of monsters and all I could think about were my mother's words.

_Run until you die._

I couldn't feel. I couldn't look too closely within me, else I would be eaten alive by the dark hole in my chest.

I hadn't been able to afford a saddle, so the cheap, too big freebie the pitying horse hand had given me chaffed against my legs and barely protected me from the bony back of the stallion, whose mane had tangled up in my fists for reigns.

_The goddesses will find you and kill you._

Thunder rumbled somewhere above me. Ahead of me spread a wide expanse of grass, speckled with tall, widespread trees and back dropped by black clouds. The moon had vanished, leaving the night almost unnaturally dark.

Had Chenise or Donna ever really known me? Had my mother implanted memories into their heads? How long had I been pretending to be human?

What was I? Mother hadn't really been in the state to be clear.

_Just go off and die._

A flash of lightening lit up the landscape. For the brief moment, I could see, and what I saw were a half a dozen pair of yellow eyes closing in, floppy mouths wide with teeth. I recognized the goblins from my dreams. Link had fought them easily, but he wasn't here now, and I hadn't the forethought to bring a weapon of any kind with me.

My stallion snorted and pulled back, sensing the goblins closing in, but I dug my heels in deep and drove it off to the right. I could hear their grating, dog-like welps of delight. But they couldn't catch me. My horse was old, but he was still a horse.

Thunder boomed ahead, several seconds behind the lightening. My stead whined in fright and bolted. If he had been running fast before, it was nothing compared to now. I held on for dear life.

My back hurt. Everything felt unfocused, like a bad dream.

_That human will fall in love and you will die, even if you never see him again._

I didn't even know him. I had just met Link once. I didn't love him or anything. Just because I dreamed about him every night, why did that mean death? Why did all this mean death?

I couldn't even remember my father or what life was like before Castle Town. When had this all started? Why was this happening?

A screech cut me off. Leathery wings came from the side, gleaming eyes alight, claws outstretched.

Pain tore across my arm and shoulder. The stallion screamed and veered to the side. I had no idea where we were going now. It took all I had just to hold on.

Why were all these monsters attacking me? The spell hadn't worn off yet, had it? They didn't recognize me for...whatever I am, did they?

I hurt. I hurt.

_This is the end._

It started to rain. The droplets shot through my clothes like needles of ice. The heavy cloak fluttered behind me like a banner and useless to keep me from getting soaked within minutes.

I should have told Donna how much of an ass Purlo was. I shouldn't have held back. I should have let her known before this. What if she ends up getting hurt because of him?

And what had I been doing with my life? Sitting by the gates, watching people, didn't I have any hobbies? Didn't I have any dreams?

The flying monster reached for me again with its claws. I felt it graze across my head, taking a few of my hairs with it. I buried my face in my horse's bony shoulders, wanting to pray to someone for help but not knowing how and already knowing there was no one there.

_Because our gods have long been conquered by the goddesses of this land._

A frightening thought broke through my feverish brain: what would be waiting for me after I died then? The Hylians taught that they would, according to their works, either be sent up to the goddesses for eternal rest, maybe even reincarnation, and the wicked would be banished far below in the darkness, to exist no more. Would I cease to exist then once I died?

But what kind of existence had I had in the first place?

I heard another crylike warble, the loud panting of a goblin, and then something hard smashed into my leg. I nearly fell off the wet side of my horse, blinded with pain.

Up ahead I could see the looming forms of trees. Something warm, something unexpected, sparked in my chest, urging me on. Into the trees, it told me. Safety is ahead, safety.

"Hyah!" I cried, urging one last burst of speed from my exhausted ride.

Twigs whipped against my face and I ducked down once more, directing with my knees the best I could according to the strange instinct within my chest. Where had I learned to ride a horse like this? In Castle Town mother and I had had no need for a horse.

A memory of open plains, speckled with sunlight and the shadows of clouds, came to my mind.

I didn't know how long I rode, how far we ran. At some point the calls of monsters died, leaving only the sound of the rain on the canopy of leaves beneath the clip-clop of hooves. He slowed down, heaving and panting, head bobbing up and down beneath my own. I couldn't focus. I couldn't wait...

I woke when I fell off my horse with a thud and a splash of mud. My stallion whinnied in surprise, but didn't move. I thought I could feel the earth turning beneath me and my body felt buzzed and heavy. So tired. The ground didn't feel that bad.

A warm puff of air across my face startled me. The old grey horse leaned over, sniffing me, probably curious to see what had happened.

"I never named you," I found myself saying through the rain.

It snorted. I fell back asleep.

Suddenly, the strange warm instinct awoke in me and started tugging on my consciousness. It urged me on, just a little further. Though I didn't move it grew stronger, pushing, pulling, until I found myself wide awake in my shaking, feverish, bleeding body. I rolled onto my hands and knees and reached for my horse, but I couldn't see how I could ever find the strength to pull myself on. The pain in my back hadn't ceased to throb, and the shin the goblin had smashed brought stars and black blotches to my eyes.

I felt the horse's nose on my neck. It puffed and grumbled.

"I know, I know, you did most of the work." I found his dark, shaggy mane and dug my hands into it. "You know I'm just going to die on you, right?"

The horse snorted, as though disagreeing with me.

"No, really," I said. But the strange something that had woken in my chest was relentless, demanding I continue forward, even if I had to walk. I had to go on, why, I didn't know.

"Kneel down for me?" I asked the horse weakly. "Please?" Wow, I had reached a new low, a new pathetic.

It took me a full few minutes to realize the warm support under my chin had vanished and that the old, knobbly stallion had knelt onto the ground, saddle before me. It watched me with eyes the color of the storm clouds above us.

Deciding I'd think on the extensiveness of my horse's training, and/or ability to understand English, I somehow managed to slid back onto his back and directed him according to the figurative compass burning in my chest.

Once more I slipped into a painful, exhausted daze. His hooves clip-clopped across the bridge, and I almost looked over the edge to see just how deep the ravine was we were crossing.

"You're such a nice horse," I mumbled. "Does that mean not everything in this world is out to reject me?"

The burning in my chest was growing stronger. I was getting closer to...whatever. Then what?

I could taste the blood on my cheek. Had the flying monster done more to my head than I thought?

The stallion stopped, right as the compass in my chest died, leaving me cold and more weak than ever.

Goddesses, my head hurt.

I strained to take in my surroundings. Through curtains of rain I made out a clearing closed in by short cliffs and tall, lush trees. I could make out a gate, and on my other side I could make out a ladder leading up to a door in a huge tree. I thought I could make out a roof cut into it's branches. Where was I? What had led me here?

The stallion looked back at me with one, big dark eye, as though asking me those same questions. It was getting harder to make out his face. The night kept getting darker.

"What should I name you?" I mumbled.

He nickered and nuzzled my uninjured leg. I felt myself slipping a bit as he knelt down onto the ground, still swinging his head back and forth to nicker at me and snort, almost as though in concern.

"You might be old, but you're awfully nice." I nuzzled my face deeper into his wet mane. "Like a grandpa."

The last sensation I felt was of his wet, coarse horse hair running under my hand and the muddy ground reaching up to catch me.

(*&^%$#$%^&*()*&^%$#

Mother had her head tipped back and screaming, a horrible, inhuman sound. Her once glistening, smooth as water hair had gone frizzy and stuck to the cloak of feathers down her back and splayed all over the ground. No, it wasn't a cloak. It was her wings, black as raven feathers and faceted with blues and greens like her black hair.

The sky had been blue that day. Blue and uncaring. It should have been raining.

_It's all my fault,_ I thought. _I shouldn't have been born. None of us should have been born._

Grass of the huge, open expanse dug into my knees like twigs. I had expected it to be soft, but why should I? This world hated me.

I had my hands to my ears.

"Mommy," my voice sounded so small. "Mommy, please stop screaming. It hurts..."

My face felt sticky with tears. My stomach hurt really bad.

"Mommy..."

Daddy had only been keeping us safe. He hadn't meant to leave. It wasn't like he was gone forever...was he? What happened after we died? Where was daddy?

The grass was suppose to feel soft. I lifted up one knee to see the red imprints on my pale skin. Pebbles stuck in my hand. I could hear the wind, soft and mournful. It was a beautiful day. It shouldn't be.

But what ever had Daddy done to deserve that? What had he done wrong?


	4. Wings

Chapter 4

I woke up to the pain. My back ached as though the bones had been crushed along with my leg and my head throbbed along with it. I groaned, wondering when I had ever gotten on a ship, for the world rocked and swayed.

_You will die._

Oh yeah. That's right. No wonder I felt like crap.

Something cool brushed across my hot forehead. Where the flying raptor had clawed at my shoulder felt puffy and itchy, but otherwise was the least of all the pains on my body. I groaned, wishing that whatever coolness was on my head would be all over me. I burned. I ached. And yet somehow, through it all, I found my eyelids and propped them open. My vision was blurry, but soon cleared.

"Well, you're still a bit warm, but not nearly as bad as you were."

I had to blink hard to see again. A girl with a kind, round face and almond-shaped green eyes smiled back at me. She had the most peculiar white-blond hair, akin to the color of sun-bleached straw.

"Hi." she said.

I just stared at her, not really trusting my throat to work if I tried to talk. Not that I had much of anything to say.

She turned around to pull up a book-sized case, which she laid next to me. I could feel the cool, hard surface pressing against my arm through the blankets. With a light snap she unfastened the case and started fiddling around in the piles of bandages and bottles within.

"I hope you have a good story for running out in a storm like that, and on a horse that could have died beneath you on the way, nonetheless."

Probably would have made my life easier if he had. Crushed to death by horse. Now I have to figure out what to do with the rest of my life, however much I had left.

Asking for permission with her eyes first, she reached over and slid down the sleeve of a huge nightshirt I didn't remember wearing before.

"You've been out for a few days." she said. "Your leg's fractured, though it looks a lot worse than that. I stitched up your shoulder while you were asleep, and it looks like it hasn't bled to much, but we should change your bandages just to be sure."

Sitting up was like moving a mountain, even with her help. Piles of pillows had been set up behind me, and I took that moment to feverishly squint around at the rest of the room. It was round, with sturdy, wood walls, simple wooden furniture, and a set of banister-less stairs curving down to the right. I took in the pink bedspread, the obviously girlish, personal touches, and came to the conclusion that this had to be her room.

The girl in question had gentle hands as she tugged the bandages away from my shoulder.

"I'm Ilia, by the way, and I've been so excited to meet you—while you're awake, that is. I've always wanted another girl in the village, since I'm guessing you can't very well go back from where you ran from."

I tried not to look too suspicious at that. I guess what else could she assume? I couldn't be traveling, because I didn't have any provisions and only that cloak as any sort of cover. Not to mention no one in their right mind would force a horse as old as mine to take them anywhere far away. Speaking of which, where is that old man?

I hardly felt her fingers as she cleaned the three gashes across my shoulder and reapplied some green smelling goop.

"So, what's the story?" Her smile had turned from a 'u' to a 'v'. "Arranged marriage? Fell in love with someone forbidden? Did some jerk break your heart?"

I stared. "Uh, no." As expected, I sounded like I had gargled sand before talking. "Didn't have anything to do with love, actually." Which wasn't too big of a lie. It wasn't like imprinting was the same as falling in love, right? Just my body zooming in a baby-making partner...

Goddesses, that maked it sound so much worse.

Ilia deflated. "Really? Then what happened? It's got to be drama to the extreme to bring you all the way here. I mean, I'm guessing you came from far away."

"Uh, yeah," I twitched a bit beneath her hands.

"Well?"

"Um," My mother couldn't stand watching me die before my eyes, so she kicked me out of the house to go die in the arms of the man who ruined it all for us in the first place. "My mom sort of...told me to leave."

"What?! You mean she made you leave that night? In the storm? On that skin and bones horse?"

"She was a little stressed."

"What did you do?" her face twitched, as though to be ashamed, but instead curved into another one of her 'v' shaped smiles. "Did you fall in bed with a guy? Sell yourself to prostitution?"

I just looked at her blankly. What a strange girl. I liked her.

Her jaw dropped. "You didn't."

I flinched. "What?"

"You know," she wiggled her almost invisible eyebrows.

It took longer than I would have liked for my muddled, too hot brain to get that she had just called me a prostitute.

"No!" I got a little too loud and ended up in a fit of coughing. She patted my back and pushed a glass of water into my hand.

"Then what was that goopy smile for?"

"Can't you give a sick person a break?" But I felt that said goopy smile coming on again as I tasted a hint of lemon in the water. "You're...you're really sweet, that's all. I sort of thought I'd just...die."

"What, did you think we'd just let you?"

"We?"

"Link and I, we found collapsed in front of his house in the middle of the night in a storm. Your horse was making quite the racket."

"Where is he, anyways?"

"Oh, with Epona. Don't worry, he's been a complete sweetheart. I've never met a more mild mannered horse."

I took another swallow of the lemon tinted water. It tasted pleasantly cool on my burning throat, and even as I felt it run down to my belly, the pain in my head eased. I sighed in relief.

She leaned down. "Feel better?"

"What is this?"

"Water from Ordon spring. I don't know what it is about it, but it tends to ease pain and help wounds heal quicker. Not, like, super quick, but quicker than normal."

I just nodded sleepily and drank some more.

Ilia stayed by my side the whole time I managed to stay conscious. Even though I didn't much feel like it, she coaxed me into eating some brothy soup that made me even more sleepy, and before I could thank her, I was out.

While I slept I dreamed, or remembered, I didn't know. But in them there was a man who had wings like mother, except a beautiful silver gray, almost like my horse's coat. He stood tall as a tree, broad as a bear, but had a quiet, almost nonexistent laugh. In my dreams he grab me, large hands swallowing up my waist, and throw a me in the air with that gentle laugh of his.

"You look like your mother," he would always say. "Why couldn't you look more like me?"

And I had wanted to look more like him. Mother was just black. Father, though, had strands of white and silver all throughout his hair, beard, and feathers. The white would gleam in the sunlight, but glow in the moonlight.

He almost buckled over with mirth when I had told him he was beautiful.

That's what he had been like. Happy. Easy to laugh.

Each memory was spaced apart with moments of consciousness, which were either filled with Ilia, soup, and healing spring water, or an empty room that ticked with the sound of an unseen clock.

"I don't know what's wrong. Her shoulder and leg have healed already—in only a week, can you believe it?-But the fever won't leave and she complains about her back in her sleep."

The back of my eyelids were dark and soft. They fought against being opened, so it was through my lashes that I found Ilia speaking to a young man I knew all too well.

"How did she heal so fast?" she asked.

"Sometimes the spirit of the spring influences it," he said, and the tenor of his voice made my blood hum in happiness. Why had I never noticed how sweet he sounded? You could just hear his heart in the way he said his words.

"But we should call for a doctor or something," Ilia looked honestly concerned. "I'm able to get her to eat when she wakes up, but she can't stay awake."

"Have you checked her back?"

"What?"

"You said she keeps complaining about it. Maybe there's a clue there."

Ilia blushed lightly. "Well, yes, but it only looks like a weird rash."

"That weird rash is probably what's giving her the fever."

"I know that! But then how do we get rid of it?"

"Beats me."

"Ugh! You're so unhelpful!"

I didn't want them to know I was awake. Then they'd be asking all sorts of questions that I wouldn't know how to answer. Also, it made me feel strange that they were so worried about keeping me alive when I was going to die soon. Besides, like this, through my lashes, hidden like this, I could examine the man who ruined my life as much as I wanted—although he had done so unknowingly. If anything, it was my stupid hormones that had done me in.

"Do you know where she's from yet?" he asked. "Maybe we can get a hold of this mother of hers."

"Don't you go sticking your nose into her business!"

Link lifted his hands up in defense. "Woa, hold on, we don't know what went on between them. For all we know it could've just been a big misunderstanding or-"

"A misunderstanding doesn't make mothers send their children out in a storm across a monster infested field on a dying horse!"

"The horse isn't dying," said Link quietly, but I could see a strange shadow flitter across his eyes. I remembered the wolf of my dreams. "Is that what she said?"

"That's what happened." said Ilia with her fists on her hips.

"So, that's what she says."

"Oh, bother, just go away. You've checked in and all that, so go herd goats or something."

I felt my chest warm at her defense of me. She didn't even know me, but had complete trust in my word. Something within me, maybe an old memory, told me that was a dangerous virtue, one that might get her killed one day, but it only made me like her all the more.

When Link left, I allowed my eyes to open all the way and struggled to sit up on my own. My back hurt, but without the shoulder and leg pain joining in, I found it somewhat manageable.

Instantly, Ilia was at my side. "Are you feeling any better?"

"Yeah," I said, as brightly as I could. "Look, you don't have to try so hard." I was, after all, going to die soon.

"Who says I'm trying hard? Anyways, do you feel up for a little walk? Not far, but my mom always told me that some fresh air can do a lot in helping someone feel better. We'll just go to the porch."

And because I didn't want her to waste any more worry, and because I really did like her, I nodded and allowed her to wrap me up in a blanket and sling an arm around her shoulders. When my back protested, I clenched my jaw shut.

The ground floor of the house was built much the same as the top floor. Well made, well lived in, and furnished simply. A smoldering of embers burned in the fireplace on the other end of the large room. I could see a door in the back, leading down into what had to be another room.

Ilia threw the front door open. I blinked in the setting sunlight. The first thing I saw were the hills of trees, painted half gold by a sun hugged in the crook of two mountains. I could hear the laughter of children and the tinkling of water.

"Here we are, easy go."

She sat me down in a padded chair, which could have been placed there just for me. I found the source of the laughter in three kids, two boys and a girl, next to a stream that ran through the little village. A waterwheel creaked somewhere, and at a little round cottage across the way I could see a blond woman rocking in her chair, a bundle held carefully in her arms.

I breathed in deep. Pine. Grass. Something cool, like the lemon spring water made into air.

Ilia smiled at me, as though something on my face pleased her, and she sat herself down next to me, feet hanging off of the porch. As she chatted about the children at the stream, things about the village, what the people were like, I listened to my own breathing and tasted the air. I could almost feel the fever melting off of me, leaving me with an almost comfortable ache.

I wanted to freeze time and live in the moment forever. This would do just fine. I didn't need a purpose, I didn't need to be wanted. Just for now, in these trees, listening to Ilia talk, watching one boy push at the other one playfully while the girl snapped at them, and waiting for the gold paint of the trees to run off with the sun.

I closed my eyes.

"You think you can eat anything?"

I smiled. "Actually, I'm starving."

"Really? Oh, good, I hope that means you're getting better."

"Thank you. Thank you so much."

"Oh, no problem, really."

But I don't know if she heard me correctly—heard the real depth to my gratitude.

I fingered the soft pants she had given me and the coarser weave of the oversized nightshirt and figured I must have bled all over my old ones. Pity. I liked that blouse.

"Hey! Look who's up!"

My head snapped to them. Somehow, while I had been staring out across the village, Link had appeared in front of Ilia's house. He looked even more handsome than when we had first met, with his face and bare arms glistening with a fine sheen of sweat and his hair dusted with dirt.

For the first time, I saw what Donna and Christine saw. The curve of muscle, the shape of his shoulders, the strength of his chin.

And I wasn't prepared for what it did to my insides.

I bolted.

Or, at least, I tried to, forgetting that I had been bedridden for more than a week.

My legs wobbled from the unexpected weight and my knees buckled. The edge of the porch came up for my face. I heard him shout. Then his hands caught my shoulders, leaving my knees to thwack against the worn wood. I could smell his sweat, and his touch sent shivers of fire down my spine.

Oh goddesses, this man was going to kill me.

"What's the ru—hey!"

I had shoved him away, pushing myself back onto the porch at the same time. I didn't wait to see his face, but scuttled backwards like a crab until I could force my stupid lame body to its feet and slip back into the safety of the house.

Ilia looked back when she heard the door slam. I must have looked something awful, for she dropped the bowl she was holding. Thankfully, it had been empty.

"Din, what happened?"

My knees were shaking horribly. We blinked at each other for a moment before I realized just how much of a freak I had just acted like, and tried to give her the most casual smile I could muster.

"It's nothing," I said. Then, to further my claim, I tried to walk to the chair at the table and just managed it. "Your mom was right, fresh air does wonders!"

"Doesn't it? Oh, and do you feel like one scoop or two scoops?"

"One. Let's not push it." Yeah, I'd already done too much of that. Sure I was going to die, but I didn't want to have my body torturing me till then. As little suffering as possible would be nice.

Link didn't come knocking on the door to ask what the crap was up wrong with me, for which I thanked his gods for. Had to count my blessings where I could get them.

After dinner, I accidentally passed out on the kitchen table and woke up to Ilia wrapping my arm around her shoulders again and taking me back upstairs.

"Isn't there a couch or something I could take?" I mumbled. "I mean, that's your bed, isn't it?"

"Oh, don't worry about it."

"But-"

Then she gave me such a stern look, one which I had just seen her give Link earlier, that whatever protest I had died on my tongue. She'd make a most formidable mother one day.

The thought, however, made me feel slightly ill. Her and Link seemed to be good friends. Surely he must see that in her. If there was any girl he loved, it was probably the strong, kind-hearted Ilia.

Lucky for me, I fell asleep before the strange feeling I felt at that thought made me throw up.

From then on I felt stronger each time I woke up. The pain in my back didn't go away completely, but I found was more able to move past the pain. One evening I was able to meet Ilia's horn-mustached father, whose sheer bulk reminded me so much of the vague memories I was getting back of my father that I instantly warmed up to him. It amused me to no ends how such a huge man would cower before the dragon-mother look (as I had christened it), of his much smaller daughter. He also didn't ask too many questions, which I liked. Like Ilia, he didn't see the need to pester someone who obviously had a painful past.

Whenever I complained about being a burden, the most stern of frowns would come on his face. After the initial protest against using her bed, Ilia had just adopted a roll of her eyes.

"When you get feeling better I'll put you to work for you keep, but that ain't going to be much use if you keep up with that sad look on your face." said her father.

I blinked. I hadn't even noticed my face was doing anything.

Illia nodded. "Yeah, we're trying so hard because we want to help you. Whatever happened back home, it's behind you now. You can start fresh here."

I could feel my eyes burning and fought against it. I knew, once I started crying, I wouldn't be able to stop.

"Why...why are you being so nice?" And I honestly wondered it. I may look like a Hylian now, but shouldn't they be sensing it by now? Shouldn't they be aggravated with me as much as their gods?

"Cause we like you, Hanna." said Ilia simply, and her father nodded gravely.

"Stop worrying," he said. "You can do your part when you're better."

Sleep was hard to come by after that. I had been caught in the crossfires of being touched by their compassion and dismayed that it didn't matter anyways.

Moved by a new found need to repay them with what little time I had, I told Ilia I was going to try and take a walk. The sooner I got well the better. I checked to make sure Link was nowhere in sight before I headed up a hill to the left of her house that looked especially inviting. Though I liked the village people well enough, I wasn't feeling too social, and the stares the kids had sent me the one time they had spotted me on the porch wasn't exactly inviting.

Up the hill I found a pasture filled with goat, but strange goats at that. They were almost the size of cows and with heavy horns that met up at the tips. I leaned heavily on the gate to rest my knees and watched them lazily eat grass. Maybe it would have been better if I had been born a goat. Then I could stay up here in this beautiful village in the forest, watching the sun paint the trees gold and listening to the water.

At some point I turned around a slipped down to sit with my back against one of the posts of the gate. I fingered the green grass and was almost surprised to find it soft and waxy against my fingers. In fact, I got so delighted by the difference from my dreams that I got caught up in yanking out grass strands and weaving them together. Maybe I could make a ring for Ilia and we could have a laugh over it. I could make up some story about how a witch had given it to me, or something else ridiculous. Making her smile was one of the few ways I felt like I had done some good.

"Hey, Hanna."

I dropped the ring. Instantly I could feel the strange squirm in my stomach again.

On the other side of the gate, Link leaned with his arms folded across the top. He smiled gently at me with a strand of grass sticking out of his mouth. His dark gold hair had a windswept look to them, and I thought I could make out a smug of ink on his face.

I didn't think. Ignoring the protest of my popping knees, I leaped up into a run.

"Wait! What did I do?"

This time, when I ran through Ilia's front door, I collapsed onto the floor, my energy spent. Lucky for me Ilia had gone to take a bath and hadn't heard me panting.

That night, this time in my own bed under the stairs, the sprint seemed to have spent what strength I had and the pain in my back made me toss and turn restlessly. I kept seeing Link's dismay as I ran from him, and somehow it carried over to the dead eyes my mother had when she told me to go and die. I didn't doubt my mother's love for me, and logically I knew I had done nothing wrong, but a little child within me still wondered. I had dreamed every night of her screaming at the sky, of father throwing me in the air, of the way her hands shook as she put the money into my hand and pushed me out the door.

When I finally did fall asleep, it was only to open my eyes to a pile of fighting, scabbling leathery wings in the middle of a wide field. I didn't have to see to know what the monstrous birds pecked at. And if I had had any doubt, specks of silvery feathers fluttered down from where they had been kicked up into the air.

I woke up with a retch, and before my body could even decide if it wanted to throw up or not, I was out the door and into the moonlit night.

I walked, not caring where I ended up. Ilia's spare, old night gown only came to my knees and I could feel the cold dew on the grass making my legs itch. The village was asleep. No children played in the stream, no candle lit the windows, and no Link walked the roads with fine, sun-kissed arms.

The pain in my back had become maddening. I stumbled across the bridge and threw up over the side, almost tipping over and falling head-first in the process. I just got up and kept walking though, heart pounding, mind whirling.

_I'm going to be torn apart just like Father._ I passed the last of the houses and saw the waterwheel cranking away. I went up a gentle hill framed by familiar short cliffs, up and up into a clearing. The warm instinct from that night jabbed at me, urging me to go up the ladder and the curious tree house set in the old oak. But I walked on. I saw two horses standing to the side of it and recognized the bony rump of my horse next to another almost twice his size. I wanted to stop and thank the old stallion, maybe see how he was doing, but another flare of white-hot pain from my back and twist of my heart pushed me on.

_Go and die already. I can't look at your face any longer._

I tripped on a stone and fell to my knees. The forest had gladly swallowed me whole and moonlight only broke in to the ground in diamonds. I retched, but managed not to throw up again, and got back on my feet. I could hear the soft hush of water up ahead and it called to me. I felt hot and cold all at once, but the sound was gentle on my ears and soothing. I wanted to die to the sound of it, in peace. I didn't want to hurt anymore.

I turned into an ornate gate I hardly noticed. When my feet hit sand, I almost gasped in surprise.

A beautiful scene met my eyes, one I couldn't have imagined. A gorgeous spring, fed by a low waterfall that spanned the length of it and kicked up rainbows in the moonlight. Green branches hung over it like a gently sloping roof, and tall, smooth stones covered in moss framed the mouth of the cliff that fed the spring.

And somehow, that's what finally broke me.

The sob I had been holding down from day one was not gentle coming out. I stumbled into the waters and happily fell to my knees, holding my throbbing, hurting, burning body.

"Stupid gods, why did you leave us here? Hell, why did you even make us? You bastards. You fucking bastards."

I slapped the water, suddenly in a fury. Furious at the gods who left us behind, furious at my mother for snapping like that, furious at her for kicking me out before explaining a thing just because she couldn't handle her stupid plan failing, furious at the fact that I hadn't questioned her once because I just knew what she said was true, furious for hurting so god damn much and not having a freaking clue why, furious at Link for being so fucking beautiful, furious at the world, furious at everything!

I tipped my head back and just started screaming every profanity I could think of. As the pain grew to a blinding intensity in my back I fought back against it by going deeper into the spring, belting every last screech I could at the stupid night sky that dared to be so damn beautiful for no reason other than to mock me.

"_I hate you!_" I shouted, hoping those uncaring bitch goddesses heard me. "_What did I ever do to you!?_"

Then the pain won over and my angry screams turned into screams of agony. I was forced to my knees as my back tore apart with a sound like tearing cloth and leather. Blood turned the water red about me, and through it I could see my pale hands clutching the sandy bottom.

And just as suddenly, it was over.

I laid in the waters, half floating, with my legs and butt on the bottom. The cold water soothed my back, just as it had soothed my aching head earlier, and my chest felt hollow and numb. It felt good. I hadn't remembered just how good it felt to not constantly be in horrible pain. Guess I hadn't been dying.

Black feathers brushed against my fingertips. I grasped a handful of them and held on for a moment, breathing heavily.

I didn't know how long I laid there, drifting and staring up at the stars. Almost without a thought I let my fingers trail down the mass of feathers that had torn from my back. My wings must be long, because I never even came close to the end, though I found a knob the elbow of it. With each brush of feathers I remembered, faintly, brushing my feathers just like this in a bathtub. Mother had told me to rub the ends with a special shampoo she made in an ugly pot that looked like a duck with its head chopped off. I had loved the smell, though. It had been sweet and earthy.

I guess now there'd be no hiding it. I couldn't go back to Ilia's. These wings must be the traits my mother had talked about that would mark me for slaughter. Feeling somewhat disconnected, I wryly wondered if I should start a bet with myself on when the first monster would show up.

A slight breeze brushed over me and I shivered. Gingerly, I sat up, felt out my feet, and slowly stood, testing how my legs would handle the new weight on my back. My waterlogged wings hung limply into the water. I lifted one up first, just as slow as before, wary that I was still surrounded by dissipating blood and wondering what kind of state my back must be in.

Water dribbled off the ends of my black feathers and tinkled back into the water.

"Hanna..."

My heart stopped.

I turned, my mouth suddenly very dry.

Behind me, in the gateway, stood Link.


	5. Light

**I think Wednesday will be my update day. So, everyone, you can expect one on or by every Wednesday. Sound peachy? Sweetness. **

**Thanks so much for reading! It's so fun telling stories. **

Chapter 5

I guess I should have expected something like this happening, what with all the racket I had been making.

Time held still. I wouldn't have even been surprised if the waterfall behind me had simply stop flowing. I stared at him, heart making up for the pause by thudding as fast and hard as it could in my throat, and he stared back at me. He only wore a heavy night shirt and pants, and his feet were bare. He held a sword in its sheath in his hand, and seeing it made me smile and a bit of my nerves soften. Of course. He would have heard all my screaming and rushed to the rescue without even bothering to put his shoes on. Maybe he really was the same man I had seen in my dreams.

I waited for him to say something to the winged freak in front of him. I even wouldn't have been surprised if he came at me with that sword of his. He was, after all, a favorite to his goddesses. I had seen that much in my dreams, at least.

"Are you okay?"

This made me flinch. He must of noticed, for he moved to try and hide his sword behind him. When I didn't answer he slowly crouched to the ground, put down his sword, and just as cautiously stood and took a step towards me.

He asked once more if I was okay.

"No." I said hoarsely.

I watched as he stepped into the waters, then stopped when I pulled up my wings and instinctively drew them in around me. I couldn't control the panic welling up inside of me when I realized I didn't have a clue what he could be thinking. Somehow, his quiet acceptance sounded so much worse than if he had just gone at me with a sword.

_Don't lure me in,_ I thought. _Don't seem so gentle._

"What's wrong?" he asked. "Can I...can I come closer? Just to see if you're okay."

"No." I said it more quickly than I intended to, and reflexively I stepped even deeper into the spring.

"Okay, I'll stay right here then. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you."

My legs hurt, and I was beginning to realize that a too-small wet nightgown was not good night clothes, and goosebumps had erupted all over my arms. My soaked wings weren't helping.

"You're that girl I met at that circus tent in Castle Town, aren't you? You had a friend who had green hair." A twitch of a smile crossed his face. "You said she wanted to look like a tree."

This shocked me more than anything else he had done that night.

"Kind of hard to forget. You saw...remember how you said you saw a wolf when you looked at me? Well, I kind of...was." he scratched the back of his head awkwardly. "I guess you popping wings out of your back makes it okay for me to tell you that. We're kind of the same, huh?"

"No." I said.

"Maybe not the same species, but, you know." he grinned, though it look awkward. "So, what's wrong? I saw a lot of blood in there, you must still be in a lot of pain. Is there anything I can do to help?"

I looked away from him. He was making it too easy to be attached. I had to turn the subject from me.

"What happened to her? That orange haired imp who hid in your shadow."

I heard his surprise. "You saw her too?" When I didn't answer, he said, with lowering of his voice, "She went home."

"Was it to that place with the black clouds and amber skies?"

"Yes." he said slowly. After a pause, he asked, "How do you know about the twilight realm?"

So that's what it was called. Huh.

"I...I saw a lot of you." I said cautiously.

"Is that why you kept running away from me? Did what you see scare you?"

I felt faintly alarmed that my running from him had affected him in any way and I looked up to shake my head furiously. "No!"

"Did I do something wrong?"

Not technically. "No."

We fell into another awkward silence. Feeling he wasn't going to attack me anytime soon (not that I would be able to do anything about it in my state, let alone with his skills), I allowed myself to drop back into the water in a cocoon of feathers. I heard more splashes as he came towards me.

"Hanna!"

I said nothing, and when he finally stopped just a few feet away from me, I could sense more than see his wariness.

I didn't like this. I didn't like this at all.

But something strange was happening. The once silvery light had started to die in a new brighter light, just like the sun. But it couldn't be morning. The light came on to fast.

Alarmed, I looked over my wings to see the beautiful, swirling carvings upon the sentinel rocks coming alive. An orb, just a shade darker than the sun, slipped out of the water. I squinted against the light, half-blinded, my heart thrumming faster than ever.

Then I blinked, and a great beast of light, with horns that curved about the sun, loomed over me, filling the spring with curtains of rainbows and light.

"Child of the forgotten gods," it boomed, "you would do well not to slander my mistresses."

So, I was to die by this beautiful creature? Killed by such wondrous light? How ironic that I found myself in love with it even as I thought this. I could make out its shape, like one of the goats I had seen in the field that day, but with a large tail. Light moved through it like liquid.

At the same time, terror overwhelmed me.

_**I don't want to die.**_

I flung out my newborn wings, flinging water droplets and more rainbows about me. Adrenaline hid the spike of pain. I turned to flee.

Just to come face to face with the spirit of light once more, as though I had never turned in the first place.

"You should have stayed in hiding," it said.

All the blood rushed from my head. My breath caught.

I fainted.


	6. Possession

**I'm on rejection letter 14. *sigh* Come on, I didn't think my novel was that bad. **

Chapter 6

It had been a miracle that mother met father at all. Father use to say that was a sign in itself that somehow, somewhere, our gods were still watching over us. How else could the last male and female of our kind find each other? And not only that, but be perfectly matched soulmates?

"Then why aren't there more of us?" I had asked.

A familiar sadness came over my parents' faces, and I instantly felt bad for asking. Mother and Father had wanted another baby for a very long time, and neither of them could explain to me, or each other, why they still only had me. I had even heard them talking late into the night that, maybe, if I could have a brother, our kind wouldn't be so lost, nor would their little daughter end up being so alone.

Neither of them had ever thought of a human being a possibility.

"Humans don't imprint," Father had told me as we watched a caravan pass under our hidden canyon home. "Their hearts are often times too weak to love and they flutter from one mate to another, selfishly seeking satisfaction, breeding like rabbits on the way."

But watching the humans, I had thought it such a shame. They could have been just like us without wings or feathers of any sort. Also, they had such a wide variety of hair colors: red, gold, browns of every shade, silver, white, and black. Why did their gods have to create them with such fickle hearts? Didn't that make them sad?

When I woke up, I still thought myself leaning over the canyon wall, watching the colorful parade of traveling humans and horses below. Therefore, when I saw a branchy roof I didn't remember, I was confused. My back hurt. The knobbly joints where my wings melded into my back protested something awful about having my weight pressing them into the floor.

When the memory of the brilliant spring came to my mind, I just laid there, growing even more confused. I had died, surely. Was this how the afterlife was, then? Painful and staring up at wood?

Slowly, I sat up, taking in what could only be the world of the dead, which was much more homey than I had expected. A fire burned in a stone fireplace, and just to the side of the flames a pot of stew boiled. I sniffed and my mouth started to water. I could smell cheese. I loved cheese.

My stomach grumbled.

"It's about time you woke up."

I turned to see Link at a sink nearby, washing dishes. It looked so odd to see the hero who had downed creatures of nightmares doing something so mundane. It somehow lessened the shock that I couldn't be dead if he was here. No being of the light who served the goddesses would harm him.

"I hope your kind don't have any weird aversions to dairy or anything, because I didn't have much." He wiped his hands off with a towel and, using the same towel, eased the hook and pot out from the fire and stirred it with a ladle that had been in his belt. "Ah, good, the cheese is just right. Burnt it last time."

Unable to look at him without feeling nervous, I tried looking elsewhere. Link's home was modest, but comfortable. Two shelves of books sat against the wall a bit away, and I could see a ladder going up into a loft where I could see the edge of a bed and desk. I fingered the blankets he had thrown on me. The rug I laid on was made of a thick weave, so although bumpy, it wasn't uncomfortable.

"Are you up for some food?"

"Um, sure. Thanks."

"No problem. I always make too much." I thought I heard something behind those words, but didn't mention it. If his traveling companion had gone home, to that other realm, he probably was use to cooking for two.

He set a wooden bowl of the soup in my blanketed lap and a spoon. I couldn't believe that the man I had once dreamed about and who my friends had drooled over now served me stew in his house. I allowed myself a small bit a pleasure from this, which only reminded me.

"How am I here?"

He hissed a bit when some of the hot foot sprinkled on his hand and he put his finger to his mouth, his own bowl in his other hand. Taking out his hand, he said, "Well, it wasn't easy, you were out like a rock and I really should work on building some steps or something, a ladder just isn't practical."

"Not that," I focused on stirring my soup so my voice wouldn't shake. "Why am I alive?"

There was a pause in his steps. He hesitated, but then sat down on the rug next to me. He blew across a spoonful of soup instead of answering. I waited, though, because I could feel something heavy coming. I tried to smother the thoughts wondering if Link was going to start asking what sort of evil I had done, or maybe he had yet to find out just what I was. Maybe he had taken me and run out on the spirit before asking questions (could someone do that?).

"I...I couldn't let him."

I paused with my spoon half way to my mouth. So he did stop him.

"You should have," I said quietly. "I expected it."

"But I couldn't. You...weren't something just to be killed. I mean, when I saw you crying and screaming like that, I guess I though you were kind of like me."

Whatever I had been expecting, it wasn't this.

"Except with wings rather than a wolf's body, of course. I had felt abandoned by my gods as well. What kind of blessing is it to be trapped in the body of a beast? A body that made my friends and family lash out at me and call me a monster. I couldn't even transform back without some outside source of help. And the pain..."

I put aside my bowl, the soup barely touched, having suddenly lost my appetite. I could feel hot, prickling irritation growing in my stomach. "That's great and all, but you really shouldn't have."

He put down his spoon. "It wasn't any problem-"

"I'm not being bashful, dipweed, and I don't care if it was or not, I'm going to be killed and that was probably going to be the easiest, pain-free death I could ask for. I didn't ask you to save me." I clenched my teeth in an effort to not yell. "But oh no, you're so use to playing the hero, you probably can't comprehend anyone not wanting your help."

He stared at me in utter shock, jaw dropped. Even while my blood thrummed for him, a little coil of hatred nestled in my stomach. He was suppose to deny it, not sit there and prove me right. Imprinted mate or not, I didn't have to love this bastard. Humans, after all, didn't have soul mates.

He recovered, though, and sent me a hard glare. "You could at least be a little grateful. I've got the goddesses on my ass because of you."

"Oh, how quaint, what are they going to do, spank you? I'll be sure to thank you when I'm being torn apart by monsters."

The tips of his long ears turned red. Nose wrinkled, eyes narrowed, he opened his mouth to retort something, than seemed to think differently and took a deep breath. His expression relaxed.

"I'm sorry I didn't ask before hand. You weren't in the state to reply."

But I still felt angry. It felt better than the twisted anxiety that had become me, and I found myself moving to stand on my feet to relish in it, bowl of stew forgotten.

"I wish you didn't exist," I snarled. "If it weren't for you none of this would have happened! I don't care if you didn't have a choice in the matter, I don't even care if it hurts you, I wish you hadn't ever come near me!" And before I could think otherwise, gut bubbling with acidic black dread of my doom and fury mounting. "I hate you! Special little child of your bastard, bitch goddesses—_I hate you!_"

He changed, like day to night. From kind, open, and friendly, to something hard and frightening. The cool fury that came over him instantly dashed my anger against the rocks. I recognized the look. It had been the most common expression he held as he cut down all who opposed him in my dreams. His blue eyes had turned to ice just as they had towards the ugly, distorted monsters of darkness.

My knees trembled. I was the monster this time.

I could see the wolf in his snarl. "Perhaps I should repent of my wrong actions, then."

He stood, and I could see the pent up power in his limbs in the way he clenched his hands. Even though he wore just a tunic and pants, I saw him as I did in my dreams, chain mail, hero garb, beautiful sword and all.

My legs shook harder, but I clenched my jaw and forced them straight. I wasn't going to be a coward this time. I wasn't going to run.

"Make it quick."

"Oh? And whatever gave you the idea that I owed you requests?"

He moved faster than I remembered. I had only to blink and he had me up against the wall, a knife I hadn't seen him take out in his hand, and its icy blade against my neck. My wings softened the blow, though the joints cried out at the abuse. Black feathers floated down between our faces.

"For someone who wants to die, you looked awfully scared back there. And look, you're shaking." He had roughly grabbed my wrist and yanked it up. I didn't look.

"It's every living thing's natural instinct to survive." I ground out. "And stop it with the drama, just do it already!"

His glare chilled me. My hands started clamming up and I could feel a cold sweat running down my sore back. The blade pressed in and I held my breath, waiting for the pain.

Then he let me go and threw the knife down at my feet in disgust.

"Do it yourself," he said. "I'm retired. And make sure it's outside, I just cleaned the place."

As he turned around I heard him mutter, "And I even tried to be nice."

My knees weakened and I tried to disguise their buckling by making it look like I was going for the knife on the floor. I wondered how much more my heart could take as I picked up the knife and examined it without really seeing it. For some reason, I couldn't quite remember how to breathe normally, and it felt like my throat had narrowed considerably.

I didn't want to die. No, that wasn't right. I didn't want it to hurt.

It was still hard to breathe. I felt nauseated. Starting to feel the tears burn in my eyes against my will, I closed my new, dark wings about me to make a comfortably dark safe haven. Listening to myself struggle to breathe, it was almost like I could pretend that nothing existed outside of my wings, that it was only me and the darkness.

I was beginning to feel light-headed.

"Put your head between your knees."

My calming spell shattered before I could even start it. I almost opened my wings and chucked the knife at him. "Why the hell should I listen to you?"

"Just do it."

And since I thought I was hidden enough in my little cocoon, I did so. Almost immediately I could feel my head spinning back down to earth and my breath evening out. For the longest time I sat there, enfolded by feathers, my face pressed against my knees till stars burst behind my eyelids. I felt sweaty, gross, and numb once more.

None of it mattered, I told myself. There was nothing to do, nothing I could do.

"What are you, anyways?" I heard him ask through a mouthful, as though he could care less.

"Didn't that goat tell you?"

"All he told me was that you were some kid of some dead god that shouldn't be around, like bad leftovers."

"How did you stop him?" Not that I cared, really.

"Classic jump in front of you and tell him to give your life to me as reward for saving the world." he said wryly. "He didn't like that, but I hadn't asked for anything up until now, and I don't think the goddesses would want me to turn out like their other chosen one. Even so, he was surprisingly agreeable. He just told me to make sure you didn't run off and resurrect your gods." I heard a noisy slurp and then a clank of spoon and bowl. "Just how bad are your gods anyways?"

"I don't know. I don't even know if they were bad."

"Hmm."

I felt out the floor for the knife and found its sharp edge with my fingers first. Even as I felt the blood trickle down my hand, I held it, trying to tell myself the pain of cutting my fingers would be what it would feel like to put the knife to my throat. Maybe my wrists would be less sensitive. Then I could just bleed out. It wouldn't be that bad. I'd just get dizzy, lose consciousness, and then die.

I put the blade to my wrist, then hesitated. He told me to go outside.

The part of me that still felt attached to him, the part that had imprinted, told me I owed him that much.

For a minute I was afraid my legs wouldn't work. When I finally got to my feet, I folded my wings back and took one last look at Link, who was lounged in a chair next to the fire with an open book in his hand. My bowl of soup had vanished, and I almost felt stupid enough to wish I had eaten it, even if I would throw up. I really did like cheese.

"Okay, outside," I said quietly. "I take it out of the way as well? Wouldn't want to scare anyone."

For a moment I thought he hadn't heard me. But then he closed his book with a snap, sighed, and looked back up at me. The hard edge was still there, but only just, as though it wasn't worth his effort.

"You don't want to die."

I didn't say anything to this. It almost made me angry again, because _no one_ wanted to die, really.

He looked up at me, met my eye. "Why do you still insist on doing it?"

I gawked at him. "It's not like I have much of a choice! Usually when gods want you dead, it just happens. I am the last of my kind for a reason."

He rolled his eyes. "Din, weren't you listening? Your life is mine now. The only one who's going to be deciding whether you die or not is me, that, or your own stupidity. So," he went back to his book. "If you're still set on dying, go for it. I won't stop you. Heaven knows I've thought about it myself a few times. Oh, and the neck would be quicker, if you were considering your wrists."

I stared at him, clutching my bleeding fingers and wavering. Something overwhelming had come over me, and I fought to think through it: why would someone like Link have a reason to think about ending his life? Chosen of the goddesses, savior of the world, surrounded by loved ones and those of his own kind—essentially, everything I didn't have. I couldn't fathom it. It just didn't compute.

"Do you mean it?" I asked, not knowing which I was referring to: if the goddesses really had given him my life through the spirit, or if he really had been suicidal.

"Yes, Hanna. Think of it as you get to live in return for me being your babysitter. Nothings going to come after you. Now would you be quiet? I'm trying to read."

The change that had come over him baffled me. It was as though the Link I had seen since I had arrived here had just been a mask, and now that he had no reason to keep it up, he had reverted back to this grumpy guy.

Or, maybe...maybe he had always been like that and had just thought I was someone he could open up to. He had said that he had though I was like him, and for a guy who turned into a wolf, it wasn't like he found someone like him everyday.

Then again, I had said some pretty nasty stuff. Who wouldn't be grouchy at me for that?

Hands starting to get sticky with blood, I clumsily wrapped up my fingers in the nightgown I still wore. I know I should apologize, or something, but I couldn't find my voice. My heart was pounding for a new reason, and I just couldn't quite grasping it. I was going to live. I was going to be allowed to live. I didn't have to die—I didn't have to be afraid of a monster popping out and tearing me apart like they had to my father.

By now, warm, golden morning light had painted the opposite wall. I traced the outline of the window with my eyes, meeting up with where Link had put me on his rug. A blanket still curled up in front of the fire place.

He...he could have asked for anything. He could have asked the goddesses for anything. They were in his debt.

I pulled out one of my wings just enough to see the tips of my black feathers. Maybe I really was evil.

When Link's hand wrapped around the wrist of my bleeding hand, I jumped. I hadn't heard him approaching.

"You're dripping blood on the floor." He pulled me to the sink. I didn't fight back as he washed my hand with a strange, rough gentleness and then wrapped up each of my cut fingers in clean linen from a tin box nearby. He had every right to do with me whatever he wanted. My life was now his, after all.

"Ordona had some conditions," he started saying.

"Ordona?"

"The goat. As the last of your kind, you are to be watched carefully, and that if I fail to keep you away from wandering a path you shouldn't, a servant of the gods will come for you personally and you will be executed."

"Did they mention what this path should look like? Anywhere I shouldn't go?"

"No. They can be awfully vague like that."

A strange bitterness tinged his voice, but I didn't ask.

"So, how am I suppose to know I'm doing something wrong?"

"Guess I'm suppose to know, since I'm the one that's babysitting you." After inspecting the bandages, he let go of my wrist. "I hope Ilia doesn't like that nightgown."

I looked down at the bloodstaied white material, only to realize, with a quick jolt, that it wasn't all that thick. If it, perchance, ever got wet...

I felt my face burn. Hopefully it had been dark enough last night that he hadn't seen anything.

"What do you plan on doing with me then?" I said, feeling as awkward as it sounded. Instinctively, my wings pressed in around me.

"I don't know." he said, with a yawn. "Maybe I'll hire you out to the mailman, he'd love you. You can fly, right?"

I blanched. "Um, uh..." I scrambled through my jig-puzzle memory bits. "I think I did...once."

He frowned. "Once?"

"My mother had a spell on me to make me human so I could live out my life."

"And so you wasted your time outside a circus tent." He frowned. "So, what happened? Did your mom kick you out and that's what did the trick?"

I wanted to cover my face with my hands. There was no way I was going to tell him the truth. I mean, come on, if some strange creature came up to me and said their blood had chosen me as their soul mate, and that I would die if they ended up with anyone else, I'm sure being creeped out would be the least of my worries.

"Yeah."

"You're lying."

I looked up at him, face falling. "Wha-?"

"Don't 'what' me, you got me curious now." He had his arms crossed in front of his chest and leaned against the counter. "What happened? You said it was my fault back there in your little rant. Did meeting me do that?"

I could feel all the blood draining from my face. Goddesses, could this guy read minds? Had I missed some super hero power of his in my dreams?

"Yeah." I said quietly. Let him leave it at that, please...

"Makes sense." he said, and before I could be surprised, he went on, "The Master Sword is suppose to be the bane of evil. It broke the spell on me without me touching it, don't know why it couldn't break the spell on you."

Master Sword? But wait a minute-"My mother isn't evil!"

"Oh?" he raised a smooth, dark blond eyebrow. "How do you know? Your gods are the ones who gave her that power, right? And you don't know if they're evil or not."

I fumbled for an answer, but his logic was perfect. A part of me even dared to hope that, maybe, his theory was the right one, not my mother's, and that I hadn't imprinted on him at all. But then that didn't explain the psychic dreams or the warm instinct that had led me to his doorstep that stormy night.

So I stayed quiet. Maybe, if I believed hard enough, it'd be true.

"Well, as long as you are under my custody, or whatever you want to call it, you can do whatever you want. It's probably best if you stay here or in my sight for now, though, since we have yet to figure out what exactly entails resurrecting your old gods."

"Probably a lot of jumping around like a maniac and yipping." I said under my breath.

I heard an almost silent chuckle and then he put his hand on top of my black head. I froze, fiery chills running through my veins like when he had caught me from falling off of Ilia's porch. I jumped away, hands out, heart pounding again. But what had been so different about that touch then before, when he had held me against the wall and grabbed me by the wrist?

But just to be safe. "Please, don't touch me."

He blinked at me in confusion, then shrugged. "Fine. I better go, Fado's going to be here any second now."

Then, as though on cue, someone hollered for him outside.

"Speak of the devil," he said.

I watched with my hands tucked tightly to my collarbone as he shoved on his boots and wrapped a folded, red girdle of sorts around his waist.

"Stay here," he said.

"I got you the first time."

Without a smile, or any other sort of farewell, he closed the door behind him.


	7. Summons

**Review please?**

Chapter 7

I don't know how long I stood there, staring at the sunlight streaming through the windows, realizing that, at least for now, I had been reprieved. At some point I figured I should at least try to pay back the debt I had to him (though I still wasn't sure if I didn't hate him, for it really was all his fault), I cleaned the dishes and then hunted down his hamper of dirty clothes and a washboard. The mechanical work of the chores I did every day back home gave me a calm I thought I would never feel again, and I happily threw myself into the work. His clothesline was hung up inside, but I thought it such a shame to drip all over the floor that I untied it and took my first step outside into the sun with it wrapped about my shoulder.

A memory of a warm summer day came to my mind. I had been sunbathing after a cold bath with mother and had found the perfect spot to watch the wild horses in the plain before us. I could remember the smell of the breeze, a mix of sandstone and grass, but mostly just the smell of pure expanse.

And every time I had smelled that pure open air, I had spread out my wings, dreaming of the day when they'd be big enough to carry me out over the horses.

It took me a moment to realize I had stood there stupidly on Link's front porch with my wings half opened. Shaking the memory away, I climbed down the ladder and almost instantly found two trees at just the right distance. I had just tied the last knot when a gray muzzle poked over my shoulder. I smiled and ran a hand up the stallion's whiskery nose.

"Hey there, Gramps. Been enjoying yourself?"

The horse snorted, as though to answer back, and I found myself laughing. I had almost forgotten how to. But I was going to live now.

I was going to live.

Eyes burning, I turned and threw my arms around his neck.

"Thank you for bringing me here."

Gramps, as I decided to call him, nickered softly in my ear.

"Hanna?"

My stomach jumped a bit and I looked over Gramps's shoulder. Standing in the middle of the clearing stood Ilia, green eyes wide and jaw dropped. She had a hamper tucked under her hand.

"It's you, isn't it." she said.

"Who else could it be?" I tried to make it sound light, and at the same time I squeezed my wings in as tight as I could.

She just stood there, staring. Just as I was starting to really get uncomfortable, she closed her mouth with an audible snap of teeth and beamed.

"For the love of Farore, I've been so worried about you! I thought we made it clear that you could stay with us, we have that extra bed and everything, it really isn't a trouble! You can't honestly tell me you want to sleep on Link's floor, do you? He's such a pig!"

"Of course not!" I said. "I'm sorry for leaving like that, I just, um, yeah..."

There just wasn't any clean cut way to say you ran off due to a nightmare and pain to burst out your wings somewhere in private. Yeah...

"It's okay, Link explained some of it to me." she walked towards me, a hand on the hamper and her smile in place. "He told me to bring you by some clothes and that he's been assigned to watch over you from now on, though honestly, I don't care who's assigned him what, a guy who makes a girl sleep on the floor is no man at all. You look a lot better now, though, how do you feel?"

"All right." I said. I couldn't shake off this vague sense of awkwardness. Wasn't she going to say anything? I wasn't human, after all. "Um, Ilia...you don't have to pretend not to be freaked out. It's okay, really."

"Freaked out?" she looked up from where she had been digging out pants and a long shirt from her hamper. "Why would I be freaked out?"

In answer I lifted out my wings a bit from my back so she could see the gleam of my black feathers in the sunlight. She eyed them, a blush rising to her face.

"They're just wings," she said. "It's not like you grew claws or fangs over night."

Just to be sure, I ran my tongue over my teeth. I had suddenly remembered a particular smirk Mother would give father that flashed her lengthened fangs. My teeth, however, were as normal as ever. Maybe it's something you inherit.

Ilia felt no guilt in commandeering Link's house to help me get dressed. Having no clothes that were designed to go around wings, Ilia did some quick thinking and cut the shirt in such a way that she could then lace leather strings through the top to tie the shirt up around my black wings. The whole time she worked on it I allowed her to run her fingers through my feathers.

"This is so weird! But they're so soft! Can you fly? Oh, could you take me?"

How comfortable she had gotten with my freakishness just took on a whole new level of disturbance for me. "Woa, hold on, I don't even know if I can fly yet."

"Have you even tried?"

"Not really."

"Well, I know what I'm doing today! Hand me that comb over there, we got to get this mane of yours out of the way."

Next thing I knew I was out in the clearing wondering when I had agreed to this and if I was excited or terrified. Ilia stood in front of me with a reed whistle on a string around her throat.

"Okay, on my whistle, you're going to jump and flap, got that?"

"Sorry, but what qualifications do you have to give flying lessons? And what about my laundry? It'll get moldy if I just leave it in the hamper."

"Forget all that and just get your wings out!" She gave a shrill toot of the whistle.

So I jumped, but having had my wings closed in most of the morning, having them fully extended startled me and I ended up tipping over onto my face. I hadn't realized just how long they were.

"That's okay, you weren't ready that time. Let's try again."

Feeling faintly annoyed at her bossiness, I got back to my feet. This time I spread out my wings on either side of me, spreading out my shaking legs in an attempt to keep my balance.

This time with the whistle tooted, I managed to flap, but had had no idea of my own strength. A gust of wind billowed out, picking up twigs and leaves in a twisting whirlwind.

And once more I found myself on my face. The bandaged fingers on my hand throbbed and I thought I could taste blood in my mouth. Once she verified that I was okay, she helped me to my feet and tried to give me some half-thought out ideas on how I could better to keep my balance.

"Maybe I should just try learning how to walk with them out before I try flying." I said dryly.

"But don't you want to fly?"

"Well, yeah, but-"

"Then let's do it one more time!"

The novelty of Ilia not treating me like the inhuman freak I was had worn out by then, and when I felt myself tipping over, wings pumping madly, I found myself almost wishing she _had_ run away and ostracized me.

"This isn't working."

"No! You actually went up a few inches that time!"

"Forget it, I have laundry to finish."

"Why are you doing his laundry anyways?"

"Because I owe him, I'm bored, and housework is sort of a hobby of mine. I can help you out with yours when I'm done, if you want."

"Nah, I just think it's weird." she blinked. "Wait, you don't like him, do you?"

My insides squirmed uncomfortably, but I scowled. "Please don't joke about that."

"I'm not joking. And it'd be okay," her cheeks reddened prettily. "I mean, I wouldn't blame you. I had a crush on him myself when I was younger, but I think that's before I realized there are other men outside of Ordon."

Then, as though to distract herself from her embarrassment, she jabbered something about having to meet up with someone, begged me to let her pet my wings one more time, then trotted off and left me to fetch my basket of laundry.

Gramps, who had been watching from a small padlock next to Link's house, ambled through the open gate and watched me idly as I flopped wet fabric over the clothesline. Occasionally he'd lean down and tear up a mouthful of grass, dirt and all, to munch on. This was the life he was suppose to have, not running for his life across the plains.

As I clipped up each shirt and whatever else, I didn't pay much attention, I let my thoughts wander to the memory the warmth of the sun had given me. How I had spread out my wings every day, wondering when the day would come that I could fly. I had planned on flying low and racing the horses across the field. Could that be where I had learned to ride? But hadn't those horses been wild?

I hummed a nonsense tune under my breath as I hung up a pair of pants. As I counted the pieces I had left, I wondered what I should do next, then laughed at the strangeness of it all. Fearing for my life one day, hanging up laundry the next.

"There you are."

I looked up towards the voice. It didn't sound like Link. At first, I saw nothing but leaves and branches. Besides me, Gramps had stiffened and looked up as I did.

"I've been looking for you everywhere."

"Who are you?"

"Come now, you should recognize the sound of my voice. All those before you did."

Then, I saw him. I hadn't seen him before due to the perfect camouflage of the feathers that ran down his back and under his woodsy colored clothing. He had bright, maple brown eyes that gleamed like a pair of acorns through the underbrush. Over his shoulder, I thought I could see green wings tucked against his back, much like mine.

I felt my heart leap so high I swore all the rest of my organs followed after it. "Are you...?"

"Unfortunately, no, little fledgeling, you really are the last of your kind."

Just as he said that, I realized just how much smaller than me he was-roughly the size of a ten year old child, even if the rest of his build was that of a full grown man.

The disappointed hurt nonetheless.

"Oh, don't look at me like that. I'm here for you and only you. Those who created you and your kind sent me to you to guide you back home to them, to safety."

I frowned. "Those who created me? But they're dead."

"Gods are immortal, you know."

Yesterday, that might've made me leap with joy. But today, after what Link had saved me, I could only feel a squirm of discomfort at the strange little green man's words.

"I'm already safe." I said. "Following you would just get me in trouble."

"Whatever gave you that idea?"

"It's the conditions I was given to live. I can't go after my gods or something, I don't see why I have to explain myself to you." With that, I started wondering when he'd go away and leaned down to get another wet shirt from the basket. I could feel sweat on the back of my neck. Why was I so nervous? If my gods really were alive, then why hadn't they saved my father or the rest of my kin? Why seek me out now?

But he had said something about those before me. They'd probably all died following him around, which was even more reason to ignore him.

"Don't be like that, little fledgling," his voice had an odd, purr-like quality that sent the hairs on my arms on end. "Don't you want to go home? Be with those of your own kind? Find a place where you and your dear mother can live out in peace?"

I slapped the shirt on the clothesline a little more vigorously than I had intended. "How do you know about my mother?"

"Where do you think she got the knowledge to cast that nifty spell over you and herself? You don't just figure those sorts of things out at your convenience."

"In that case, why didn't you take her back to the gods? In fact, why didn't you come to her before my father was killed? We could have all used a little safety then."

The green man seemed unfazed by the obvious tinge of anger in my voice and just kept smiling that strange, creamy smile at me. It was the one part of his body that wasn't covered in green feathers or clothes, and his skin was the color of light sand.

"Because they hadn't the power you have. As the last of your kind, only you have all the keys and gifts of your people. Your parents had but half. It is your privilege to bring about the salvation of your species."

"Sure." I said, lifting up my now empty basket. "And I'm suppose to risk my life and trust the word of some green stranger just because he says he knows my mother, no thank you."

"Fledgling, this isn't a matter where you have much of a choice."

I swiveled around. "What do you-"

But he had vanished. I squinted into the foliage, just in case I had missed him like I had the first time. When I could make out nothing, I frowned to myself and headed back towards the ladder to Link's house.


	8. Babies

**Please review! Pretty, pretty, pretty please! **

Chapter 8

Life for me actually started to fall into something akin to normal after that. Ilia bullied Link into letting me return to the bed under the stairs at her house (for propriety's sake, she had said), and I promised him that I wouldn't leave the little village of Ordon under any circumstances.

Having my wings finally free, my weakness and fevers dissipated and my odd ability to heal quicker than humans made it so that, by the end of the day, my torn back had healed and I was able to offer myself up for services to Bo (the name of her horned mustached father), and Ilia. Ilia, who while feminine down to the bone and quite the good cook, hated housework, and happily handed it over to me. I soon became some sort of show for the few villagers, who found it the most remarkable thing in the world to see a winged girl doing their mayor's laundry and dishes. Now, I'm not going to brag, but I'm a queen when it comes to housework, so within a week I was doing everyone else's laundry, and happily so. There's nothing like the peace of listening to the breeze, smelling the air, and spreading out a wide white sheet across a line.

Now and then I'd feel little fingers poking into my feathers and I'd turn around to see one of the village children running for it as fast as they could. After the fifth time this happened, I whipped around with one of the dry blankets and threw it over the perpetrator like a net. The little boy screamed and begged for mercy, making me grin.

"You know, it's impolite to touch a lady without asking for permission." I said.

The blanket wriggled once before falling still.

"You're not going to eat me, are you?"

I laughed. "Eat you? Eww. I prefer cheese. Are you going to eat me?"

"Only if you taste like chicken."

This should have been offensive to me, seeing I had wings and all, but I only laughed and lifted up my blanket net. A frazzled, brown haired boy crouched at my feet, short eyebrows giving him a perpetually bemused expression, no matter how he moved his face.

"Now that's just rude." I said.

"I'm sorry."

I crouched down to his eye level and stretched out my fore-feathers to him. He blinked at my wing in confusion.

"Go on," I poked him with a feather. "You wanted to touch them, right?"

At first he was cautious, as though afraid I'd change my mind at any minute. But soon the softness of my wings set him at ease and he was running his fingers down with a look of awe. Two other children, the girl and the blond boy I had seen earlier, came out of hiding to watch in amazement, but they too came over to bury their hands into the softness. It actually felt kind of nice, although weird.

"I told them not to," said the girl, who looked to be just over the edge of starting puberty. "They can be so immature."

"Yeah right, Beth, you were the one who kept gawking at her like some freak show."

Her freckled cheeks flushed. "I was not!" And to hide her embarrassment she hid her face in my left wing, which she had to herself while the two boys had my right.

"What's your name?" asked the blond boy polity. I recognized the face of the woman who had rocked her baby on her porch in his features.

"Hanna." I said. "What's yours?"

"Collin."

"I'm Beth, as you've heard."

"I'm Talo! I have a brother, Malo, you've probably seen him, but he's back home with his fingers all over that stupid bead thingy of his."

"It's called an abacus, moron." Beth said.

"I know that! I just didn't feel like saying it."

They somehow got to asking me all sorts of expected questions, such as if there were more people like me, what happened to them, why'd I come here, etc etc, and, of course, if I could fly. I answered as basically as I could without startling them, such as leaving out the fact that all my people had been killed off one by one by their gods and simply summed it up to: 'they all died,' to which the children looked so pitying and sad I changed the subject by telling them how Ilia thought she could teach me how to fly.

"She's such a know-it-all," huffed Beth.

"Look who's talking," said a quiet voice.

Malo, the younger brother of Talo, had appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Before Talo could start teasing him about playing with the 'bead thing,' Colin asked me if I wanted to play a game of hide and seek with them. I had finished hanging up laundry as we had talked, and since the other chores I had around the house were mostly complete, I agreed to it happily. A memory came to my mind then of when I had been a child and had only had my mother and father to play with. Even at a ripe seventeen, my heart skipped at the idea of being able to play with others.

We played rock paper scissors to decide who would be it, which turned out to be Talo, who grumped quite a bit but agreed and buried his face in the bark of a tree nearby.

"You better hurry," said his baby faced brother. "He skips numbers when he thinks no one is around."

So I set at a run up a hill to where a small grove of trees watched the village. The boundaries for the game were, of course, the village, and I figured since I was just a jump and skip away from landing on the Mayor's roof, I was all too comfortable to climb up a pine and tuck myself away behind the branches.

"Wouldn't you rather play with your own children?"

I nearly fell off my branch in surprise. Dark green like the pine-needles around him, the short, green winged man hung upside next to me, like a bat.

"Why do you ask something like that?"

"Because if you stay here, you will never have children. You will grow old and die on your own, for humans don't imprint."

I turned my head away. "Better than being dead."

"Some would argue otherwise."

"What are you doing here? I'm not interested in what you have to say."

"Oh, but you should. Our gods offer you life if you but come to them. You have the means to bring back your entire species, and yet you hesitate? How cowardly."

"It's not cowardly," I snapped. "It's survival. Our gods don't rule this land anymore, and the ones who do told me if I stayed put they'd leave me be, and so I will. Do you really expect me to just jump after you and get immortal _gods_ after me?"

"Like I said. Cowardice."

"Whatever."

I turned to watch Talo through the branches as he ran about the windmill, instantly finding Collin, who then followed after him as he searched the rest of the village for the others. Without meaning to, I imagined the two boys with wings the color of their hair, fluttering about with steps as light as air. I shook the thought out of my head and turned to see the green man still there, watching me with his acorn bright eyes.

"You will come with me." he said.

A small prick of fear chilled my chest. "Make me."

"Gladly, but you are far more powerful than I. I am but a guide."

I snorted in amusement, though I felt far from amused. "Powerful, yeah, I can't even fly."

"That's because you are trying too hard. Flying for our kind is like breathing, it is our nature."

"Sure. Can you go away now? I'm sort of trying to hide." For I had seen the two boys, now with Beth, trailing my way, eyes scanning the treeline.

"As you wish."

And, sure enough, he vanished, as though he had simply melted away into the tree.

Beth spotted me and I had to come down from my tree. It wasn't until an hour later when we found Malo, who had hidden in plain sight in his bedroom, fiddling with the abacus and taking notes on a piece of paper. After that we all separated. I went to get the laundry folded, put away, and the beds made while Ilia cooked dinner.

Yep. Overall, life had gotten pretty good for me. My heart still ached for my mother, who I hoped was doing okay, and my blood still jerked and burned whenever I saw Link, sweaty from his work wrangling (which I had foolishly watched one morning and ended up walking away with a heavy feeling between my legs and my brain trying to convince me to sneak into his house at night), but I started to build up a semblance of happiness. Despite the warning from the green man that I'd probably never be able to have a family, I started to see myself living out my life in this peaceful place.

That is, it would have all been good, if it hadn't been for the dreams.

Link came into my dreams again in flashes. I'd just see him asleep in his bed or stroking the fire, then my mind would jump to an old memory of watching wild horses, being held by father as we flew through the air, being told stories by my father of a stone city in the sky and a day when it had been filled with our people in all the colors of the rainbow.

But then, striking through the visions like a black arrow, came the wonderful glimpses of a heaven I would never, ever have.

One had little winged children playing about my knees with pale, black speckled wings and bright blue eyes and pudgy hands reaching up for me. Others had me walking through a crowd of winged people in the most beautiful shades, talking to one another, laughing, creating, yelling, singing, dancing-living.

But the worst by far was the one filled with the light of a warm fire and the sound of music. A set of my people played drums, flutes, and guitars as I and others trapezed about the fire, swooping our wings in graceful arcs to our dance. But then, as I rounded a corner, the only man my body and soul would accept as my mate came into view, not as a Hylian human, but as one of my people.

It suited him, like he was born to it. His wings were almost white and streaked with sun kisses of golden brown, and his eyes were bright with warmth. He laughed out loud as he reached for me, pulling me along side him in the dance. I could see the blue of my children's eyes in his, see the shape of his face beneath their round cheeks, and see his smile in theirs.

As the music raised up into a trilling climax, we grasped each others hands along with others around the fire and lifted up into the air as one with a mighty pump of our wings. My feet left the ground, and our fingers reached to the stars above.

I awoke in elation I had never felt before. But it left me as soon as I remembered where I was, and the higher you are, the harder you fall.

I couldn't sleep after that. I wanted to call these tempting dreams nightmares, if only I wasn't so in love with them. But if they kept coming every night, I'd commit suicide before the month was over. That, or I'd give in and do just as the green man said I would and follow him to my forbidden gods.

Eventually, I got up and pulled on my boots. After tearing through Ilia's old nightgown by growing wings in them, I had got to sleeping in the oversized shirt and pants she had put me in before and modified to fit around my wings, and it was in these that I walked out into the night. Half of the moon watched me as I made my trek through the sleeping village and up the hill to a clearing that held the home built into an ancient tree.

I didn't know what I had meant to do by coming here when I had climbed up the ladder and faced his door. He would be asleep, just like everyone else. When I knocked, though, his voice told me to enter and I closed the door quietly behind me.

Link sat in nightclothes much like mine in a chair next to his fire, a book in his hands and his dark blond hair curling about his collarbone. He barely had the mind to recognize me before I had crossed the room, knelt at his feet, thrown my arms around his waist, and buried my face into his stomach. I let my wings fall open onto the floor.

"Hanna?"

I didn't care what he thought. The dream still played through my mind, making me sick with pain. I wanted to weep, but my throat had painfully closed up over the sob.

"He keeps tempting me," I said, my voice strained.

"Who?"

For a moment I had to wonder if I meant Link or the green man. "This little man who hides in the trees and tells me he is a messenger from those who created me. I told him to leave me alone, but he keeps telling me the most horrible things and giving me awful dreams."

My eyes burned and I hugged him tighter. I shouldn't be doing this. I could smell him—a wonderful mix of pine, leather, and a unique musk-and my blood had already started to race as it always did near him. This would ruin me if I didn't let go. That, and Link would think me a freak for grabbing onto him like this.

But I still didn't care. Without wondering if Link even wanted to hear or what he would think of me, I told him all about the green man, what he had said, and the dreams of children and being among my own kind that plague me. I just stopped short of spilling the dream that had brought me here. Yes, I would be humiliated enough by hanging off of him when all this was over, but telling him of my imprinting was still the last thing I wanted to do. Humans didn't imprint after all. He wouldn't be able to understand.

Somewhere in my gabbling he had put his hand on my head and started stroking my hair in small, short, sort of awkward pats that slowly got more comfortable as the time passed. When I finally fell into silence I couldn't breathe through my nose and I knew when I pulled away, Link's shirt would be soaked with my tears.

"Please don't worry, I won't go after him," I said, sounding borderline hysterical, even to myself. "I don't want to die, I don't want to be bad, I really want to be good."

"You are not bad, calm down."

"But they want me dead, they don't even want me to exist-"

"Hanna, breathe."

A broken sob finally made it past my throat. "What did I do wrong? I don't want to die, I don't want to die-"

He pushed me away, breaking my hold on him and put his hands to either side of my face. They were rough with callouses, almost like having the surfaces of stones against my cheeks, but they were warm and gentle.

He looked into my eyes. I felt myself starting to shake at the reminder of the little babies that had his eyes.

"You are not going to die, Hanna. I'm watching over you, remember? So just stop stressing out."

I blinked furiously to try and clear the tears from my eyes and sniffed. "But..."

"Yes?"

I pulled out of his grip to stare at my clenched hands in my lap.

"I'm afraid."

"You don't need to be."

"But I am," I bowed my head lower. "Because they're getting to me. I...I want..." I put my hands to my face. "I must be bad. I shouldn't be wanting these things. I am the last, and being able to live is more than I could ask for."

Link's voice rose, almost angrily. "Hanna, you are not evil for wanting to have a family and people like you. Not in the slightest, and you're being ridiculous for thinking so."

"But...what if what they say is true? What if I really do have the power to save all my people? It would make me a coward, don't you think? A selfish coward leaving her entire race just so she can live in safety."

I clenched my eyes over the tears and buried the balls of my hands into my eyes. I felt so confused and awful. I didn't want to be bad, to be called evil, by disobeying the gods who had made such a beautiful world by chasing after my own gods, who may just be a danger to Link's world and all who lived there. What other reason would the goddesses who had created so much beauty and good have to hunt down my kind?

But Link had said I wasn't bad. I wanted it to stay that way.

But, then, were the rest of my people evil?

I thought of father, ocher eyes gleaming, tossing me into the air with his soft laughter. I thought of the plains of horses, of my mother's soft hands, of the smell of the open air and freedom. I thought of the nature of imprinting, and how our gods kindly lead us to our soul mates, and that made me look back up at Link.

He had a distinct frown on his face and wasn't looking at me, but somewhere off to the side of me. His book had been tucked away underneath the chair, and the hand that had awkwardly pat my head now lay by his thigh.

Soul mates...

"It's always scary, being called upon to save all those you love, and even more that you don't. A whole world on your shoulders is no laughing matter." he said quietly. "Yes, it calls for a lot of bravery. Of course it's scary."

I dried my face off with my sleeve. "What do you mean? Are you saying it might be okay to want to follow the green man?"

"I guess it would sound like that, huh?"

I fell quiet, unsure of what I felt about that.

A memory crept up from the darkness, as all my returning memories did. They came whenever they pleased, and at the oddest times.

In it, I had stood by mother as I watched father fly low over a flash flood, the rain still pouring down to drench his wings. I remembered how my hand had hurt from the tight grip of my mother's. If father fell into the flood himself—but he hadn't. He reached what he had meant to and came up in a flurry of wet wings. He had to fight to make it back up to our hidden cliff side home, especially given the weight of the ten year old girl in his arms. A human girl.

I didn't have to watch the scenes playing before my eyes to know that, over the next two weeks, my parents would care for this girl until they could find her family. She had been one of my first friends, and I still remembered the hours we would sit together on my favorite rock, staring out over the plains and whispering dreams of flight.

No. My father hadn't been evil. He had been nothing but good.

"I don't understand." I murmured. "My parents only wanted to live, to be safe. They just wanted me to be happy. They never meant any harm to anyone."

And then I remembered my mother's words before I left: how she had sarcastically remarked about slitting people's throats and poisoning them. At the same time, I could understand how, on being driven past her limits, she was willing to give in to the only explainable reason to her suffering: that she really was a blight to the world.

"I take it you're starting to remember, then." he said, reaching down for his book.

"In bits, yeah." I drew circles along the knots of the rug I sat on. "Link...what should I do for the rest of my life? I mean, what can I do. Is doing people's laundry all I'm good for?"

He grunted, flipping his book open. "I've been asking that same question about myself for months. All I'm good at is killing things and wrangling goats. I guess all that should be enough for us, right?"

The way he said 'us,' though he didn't mean anything even remotely romantic by it, made me shiver. I shoved down the little happy feeling at the thought. "It's better than waiting for your slow, painful death everyday. Life actually is pretty good for me, if it weren't for these stupid nightmares."

"Tell me about it. Why do you think I'm up so late? Work is going to be hell tomorrow."

I looked up at him. Nightmares? But of course. After all he had lived through...and then how he had mentioned being suicidal, hopefully in the past.

As his eyes traveled across the pages of his book, I traced the lines of his face and the shape of his eyes. He really was one of the most handsome men I had ever seen. But yes, if I looked hard enough, I could see the shadows beneath his eyes, the tightness in his jaw, and the almost hunched way he held his shoulders, as though preparing for pain.

Uneased and more concerned than I wanted to admit, I folded my legs in and laid a wing across my lap to run my fingers through. The black gloss of the feathers reflected the orange firelight perfectly.

"Link, can I ask you a question?"

"Don't see why not. I've already read this book three times, so I won't miss anything."

I hesitated. Then, last second, I changed my mind. "Do you have any of that stew left?"  
>He got up to check his ice box, which was stowed somewhere in his cellar, leaving me to my own thoughts. He brought up a clay pot of it, saying we must be on the same train of thought because he was getting hungry too, and he warmed it up for the both of us. We made a bit of small talk about the children (Talong, Malon, Beth, and Collin), I had played with, how it was living in Ordon, but near the end we fell into silence. The crackling of the fire put me into a lull. Only moments after finishing my stew, I curled up in a mass of feathers on the rug, just intending to rest a bit before going back to Ilia's. The next thing I knew, however, I was being woken up by Link throwing a blanket over me.<p>

"You're not bad, Hanna." he had said quietly. "And, one day, you'll be able to have a family again, even if I have to parade you in front of all the single guys I can find."

I never opened my eyes to see his face when he said that. But after hearing him step away and up the ladder to his own bed, I wish I had.


	9. Demonstration

**To the guest reviewer named Ri who said she checked my story every day for updates, this chapter is for you, since you made me feel like a freaking famous person even though I had just received my twenty-something rejection letter from a literary agent. And thank you to the rest of you who are providing your support for this story! You don't know how much it means to me in a time like this.**

Chapter 9

Curled up on Link's rug, with the smell of him surrounding me, no dreams or nightmares made their way to me. For once I dreamed of pointless things, like playing in the stream or chasing after Talo and Beth, who were laughing with their arms thrown up into the air.

When I opened my eyes, Link had left off to work and there was a bowl of cool oatmeal waiting for me on the table. I ate it quietly, a little bit happy that he had thought of me. I couldn't entirely blame myself for imprinting on him now. Waking up like this every morning would be nice.

On my way out I took his laundry with me and walked down to the village with it. After changing at Ilia's house into the tunic she had made for me that tied up and around my wings, I went about gathering, not only the towns laundry, but their dishes as well, and headed downstream with a load of soap and a washboard tied to bags around my waist. It made sense to me, now, why everyone had such a weird fashion sense of tying those thick girdles around their waists. The children of the town were waking up as well, and all a bustle with their own chores.

"You're such a dear for doing this," said the store lady as she brought over a basket of her own laundry for me. "I can't tell you how much help it is. I have more than my fair share with that lazy, worthless husband of mine. I'll have Beth bring you over lunch as thanks, she makes the most wonderful sandwiches."

I turned to tell her thank you, but was stopped. A flash of an image came to mind of her throwing a wad of mud, face red as a tomato with anger. I blinked hard and tried to focus on her face. What an odd time for my perspicacity to kick in. It didn't work with every person I met, and when it did kick in it was usually when I first met them, not a few days after I had. And the image of her throwing mud didn't seem of any importance, so I shook it off and smiled at her.

"Thank you, and it's no problem at all! I like doing it."

"Bless your heart." she said.

I enjoyed my morning scrubbing clothes along the washboard, watching the suds wash down stream, and listening to the life about me. I could hear the families voices as they talked to one another, hear cuccos cluck, and somewhere I could hear a hawk cry. Two butterflies danced about each other above a flower patch a few feet away from me.

By the time Beth came over with a sandwich, I had just finished hanging up the villages laundry on their individual clotheslines next to their homes. The dishes waited for me back at the stream.

"I can't see how you can actually like doing this sort of stuff." said Beth, her cute, freckled nose wrinkled up. "One day I'm going to marry a rich man, you know, and then I can just hire a maid to do all this."

"Great! Maybe you could hire me then."

Her eyebrows rose. "Well, sure! Though I still think you're kinda weird for actually liking it."

I smiled at this. Being weird for enjoying dirty laundry was better than being weird for having huge black wings on your back.

"Say, why doesn't anyone think I'm weird for having wings?"

"Well, there's fish people and rock people, not too much of a stretch to get bird people."

"Fish people?"

"Goodness, aren't you sheltered." she said, putting her hands on her per-pubescent hips. "Haven't you ever met a Zora or a Goron? Ever heard of them?"

"I guess, yeah." I felt a little silly now. I had seen plenty of Goron merchants in castle town. As to the Zoras, Mother had never taken me down to the Spirit's spring by Lake Hyrule like the other townsfolk (which now made sense to me), and so I had only ever heard indirect mentions of them. I had never thought of them as fish people, just...aquatic people.

Guess they are sort of that, huh?

I waved to Beth as she ran off to continue her next chore.

"You've been thoroughly domesticated, haven't you?"

I looked up from the tub of soapy water, which I had taken with me back to my spot down stream to do dishes. In front of me, crouched in some tall grass atop a narrow pillar in the stream, was the green man, acorn eyes glinting in the noonday sun. It was the most revealed I had seen him yet.

"You make me sound like some wild animal." I said dryly, looking back down to my washtub. Even though I knew I should, it was hard for me to ignore him. Besides my mother, he was the only one I knew of who shared a connection with me and our banished creators.

"To some perspectives, you would be." he said.

"What do you want?"

"Can't I see my princess?"

I dried a plate and put it to the side. "Princess?"

"I thin it's a fitting title to the one who will save all her people."

I picked up another plate and went to scrubbing it clean of the dried corn on it's edges. I didn't respond right away, and when I did I didn't look up. "Say, if I did follow you, what would happen to these people?"

"Don't tell me you feel for these killers."

"They're not killers."

"But they aren't entirely innocent either. Do you think the goddesses would be so quick to hunt your kind down if the Hylians had just accepted you as one of their own? As just the 'bird-people,' as your little friend said? Our gods will not take kindly to the murderers of their children."

I didn't like that he had over heard us, but at the same time I wasn't surprised. I finished my last plate, still not looking up.

"Those were in the past." I said. "These people know nothing of me, and have only been kind and generous. I don't see it as right to blame them for the wrongs of their forefathers."

He chuckled, a popping, silky sort of sound and I looked up to see those acorn eyes squinted tight with mirth.

"They have yet to see who you really are, little fledgling, for believe me, you are as much a human bird as I am a dead horse."

"It doesn't matter." I said with a scowl, angrily cramming my rag into a wooden tankard. "I won't sacrifice a whole race just to save another, and if my gods are just going to turn around and do what the goddesses have done, I'm not helping, and you can take that to the bank and cash it. Stop bugging me, stop it with the stupid dreams—because I know you have something to do with that."

I expected him to get angry, or something along the lines of that. I even wanted him to be. It would have been better than the chilling, wide, inhuman smile he gave me.

"I see I'm going to have to make a demonstration of the true nature of these beasts." He got to his feet with a flap of his leaf-like feathers and bowed low. "I take my leave, little fledgeling."

He slipped over the edge and simply vanished, as he always had. My blood, however, had ran cold at his words and it took me a full minute to realize my hand was stuck in the tankard. Growing frantic, I tugged my hand out of the mug, nearly breaking it in the process, and made my way through the village. I felt like running, I felt like screaming, but I didn't even have any idea what the green man intended to do to 'make a demonstration' of the villagers true nature, so I couldn't even begin to know what to do about it. Instead, I sped walked, hoping to control my own panic that way. No one seemed to notice me as I made my way across the bridge and up the hill to the goat fields, wringing my hands.

When I came to the gate I found Link easily holding down a goat by the horns as Fado, the goat keeper, sheered off long stretches of fur. For a moment I was distracted by Link's bare chest and the bulging muscles in his arms to keep the squirming goat still. The heavy feeling between my legs came back, and I shook my hands hard as though that could make it go away.

My first calling of his name came out as a croak, and I had to clear my throat and try two more times before he finally looked up.

"What is it? I hope you don't need me for something, I'm a little busy."

And as though to verify his words, the goat tried bucking out at Fado, who cursed and pinned down the animals hooves with his thighs. Link gave the goat's head another shove into the ground to remind him who was boss and it fell still, glaring up at him with round, dark eyes.

"It's the green man," I said. "He's-"

Whatever I had said next escaped me as shrill screams erupted from the village behind me.

Link let go of the goat's horns as though burned.

Fado dropped his sheers. "What the-"

I had frozen in place, heart sinking to my stomach. I didn't want to turn around. I didn't want to see what was happening.

"Get a weapon." Link said to Fado as the goat squirmed out of their hands and back onto its feet. Link had picked up the dropped shears.

"But, Rusl, he'll take care of-"

Link had already started running to the gate. "For once in your life, stop being a coward!" He flung himself over with his momentum and grabbed my wrist to yank me into movement.

"What's happening?" he asked.

But I had lost my voice. Over the treetops I could see dragon-like shapes circling the village on their leathery wings. They had a strange, greenish hue, as though moss were growing on their scales.

He let go of me and I ran down the hill with him.

Around the corner, a daytime nightmare had unfolded.

About half a dozen reptilian wing beasts lined with claws and wicked, lipless, teeth filled mouths chased after the villagers. They dove from the sky or ran after them on foot, screeching blood-curdling cries not unlike the hawk's cry I had heard earlier. Most of the villagers had tried taking shelter in their homes, but the monsters simply fell on their roofs and started tearing through the hatch. A bearded man who I had come to know as Rusl, the village swordsman, swung his sword at two of the beasts, who looked as though they had been halfway through tearing apart one of the Mayor's windows, where Ilia watched with her arms wrapped about her shoulders.

And there, almost hidden in the same tress I had hid in earlier, perched the green man, smiling his inhuman smile down on it all.

I tripped to a stop, horrified. Link ran on without another glance past me, holding up the goat shears in his hand like a dagger. He would die, equipped like that. Not even Rusl, with his fine sword, seemed to be getting anywhere with the two dragons he faced.

"Go on. Save them."

The green man had appeared right behind me to hiss into my ear. My terror mounted until it became something like fury.

"How could you?" I whirled around to punch him in the stupid face, but he had vanished once more, leaving behind two lone green feathers.

This was not fair. This was so wrong—and all this, for what? To prove to me that humans would never accept me, but how did killing them accomplish that? If this is what my presence inevitably caused them, I wouldn't blame them myself for kicking me out.

I heard someone screaming and turned back to see Talon high up in a tree, cringing back from the reaching claws of one of the monsters.

I didn't think. I just ran, spread out my wings, and flung myself into the air.

By the time I realized I was airborne I had already landed on the creature's back, my panic, desperation, and anger melding into something that turned my vision red. I tore into it's back with my fingernails, beating my wings of thick muscle and bone against it's own thin, membrane ones. It screeched in pain. The branch shook with its attempt to stay on and Talon clung on for dear life.

Sludge like, dark red blood bled out from where I had scratched, and I was momentarily surprised at how easily it's scales fell away. It was only a second, but it was enough time for the dragon to flip me off—but not without me digging my nails into one of its now broken wings. We tumbled to the ground with a thump.

"Talon! Get inside!" I screamed as I continued to fight against the dragon—more like beat it with my wings and legs as it flailed about. Its blood covered my fingers. It reached out to snap it's jaws into my face, but I caught it around its neck with a grip I didn't know I had. Without thinking, I flung it up and over me, snapping it's neck in the process, and flinging it with a bang onto the ground.

I didn't have any time to wonder at my own ability to down a dragon or see if Talon had made it inside before I saw another of the monsters gaining up on Link's back, claws outstretched.

Like before, I just flung myself forward and ended up flying. I fell onto its back, scratching like a feral cat and screaming my lame attempt at a war cry before its claws even reached Link. This time, with my new found strength reached for its neck, flapping my wings furiously to smash its wings into the ground. It writhed, snapping it's lipless jaws, straining to reach back for me.

"Link, go get your sword!" I cried. Something like sticks had gotten into my mouth where my canines were, making it awkward to talk. I could taste blood in my mouth.

"But the villagers might die before-"

"We got it!" said Rusl, a deep cut on his cheek and a felled dragon at his feet. "You're no help with those scissors."

Link turned to run just as I pulled the dragon's head past its back. With a satisfying crunch its neck snapped and it fell limp beneath my bloody fingers.

Once I managed to tear into the dragon on Rusl's back, we ran to the nearest house that had a dragon through its roof. I could hear the shop keeper woman screaming bloody murder. I flapped to the roof with my ears ringing. The lizard had its head inside the house, so it didn't even see me until I had tackled it and tumbled to the river bank with it. Chinaware shattered as its body hit the wooden tub I had left there.

This time I was on the dragon's side, so it's claws were in full range. It raked them across my right shoulder, spilling bright blood into the river. Oddly, I barely felt the pain. It did spark something inside me, though, something so bright and hot it was almost acidic.

I dug my nails into its chest, memories flashing fast across my memory. Mother had taught me once...mother had clenched her hand into the bowl...

River water flung up at my call and smothered the dragon. It splashed and choked, staining the water even deeper with my blood. I pushed the water down, imagining it going deeper and deeper till it filled the dragons belly, filled its lungs.

I unstuck my nails from its drowned chest and flew across the stream, white hot with power, almost sick with it, and calling tendrils of airborne water with me.

It was getting harder to see through the red. It was getting harder to think. All I could feel was the desperation, the anger, and the disgust.

Thick ropes of water lashed out, entwining around the necks of some dragons and flying down the throats of others. Their dying shrieks rose into the air as one as I clenched my hands and crushed harder and harder upon them, my wings raised, my nails buried deep into the grass and earth on the bank of the river.

"Hanna! Stop!"

Link. I would know his voice in any state, even death itself.

I came to with a splash of water. Bodies of dragons flopped from the air, tongues lolling out, and their serpentine eyes bulging. The village was silent except for the weeping of children, the left over screaming of the shop keeper, and the wailing of a baby somewhere. I had my knees in the grass outside the watermill with my bloody fingers in the dirt, my wings lifted high and the taste of blood still strong in my mouth. The bloody slash on my shoulder throbbed dully.

I pulled my fingers out, looking around for signs of the green man. Before I looked long I met Link's eyes across the way and felt something nasty and dark worm its way down to my gut.

Oh goddess, please tell me no one is dead. Please let no one be dead because of me.

I got up and ran, ignoring my tingling, wobbling legs.

"Talon! Where's Talon, did he get inside? Is the shopkeeper-"

He stepped into my path. His sword had been jammed point first into the earth, where it waited.

"Stop."

"But Talon, he-"

"Hanna, have you looked at yourself?"

Frustrated and confused as to why something so stupid should matter, I looked down at myself. At first I thought he had just meant my shoulder, but then I saw my hands.

My nails had grown to thick claws, now covered with blood, and the tendons on my hands stood out with hidden strength I didn't have before. With trembling fingers I felt out my face until I felt what I had passed off as twigs in my mouth. Fangs. Even as I touched them I could feel them slowly retracting, but no longer to a human size. They had split my bottom lip in the fight, so it was my own blood that I was tasting, but it dribbled down my chin and had stained my tunic.

I kept looking at my arms, dread mounting. This couldn't be real. This had to be another nightmare of the green man's. I looked up at Link, hoping to see something of comfort, but all I saw in his gaze was grim soberness and something like disgust.

Someone screamed and I recoiled. The shopkeeper had stepped out of her house and was now pointing at me, hands to her face.

"There's still one left! Link, Rusl, why are you just standing there? Its going to kill us!"

Beth had cowered behind her mother, eyes wide and terrified on me.

But the worse was yet to come.

"Rusl! Quick! It's Talon!"

**Please review?**


	10. Ponies

**Pretty please review!**

Chapter Ten

Link turned and ran after Rusl, and I followed as though in a dream.

This couldn't be happening. It just couldn't be real.

Talon's father had found him at the foot of the tree, unconscious, pale faced, and with his arm and leg screwed at awkward directions.

"Talon, Talon say something." His father looked up to say something to Rusl, then stopped with a jump and shout when his eyes fell on me.

I stepped back. "Is he okay?"

"You did this?!"

The kind man who I had helped peel pumpkins a day earlier now looked like a bear. His jaw squared and his eyes shot in on me.

"No, I—I just want to know if he's okay."

"Get away from him!" cried another voice, and before I had time to think vice-like hands clamped around my arms and Talon's mother threw me to the side. I cried out as I landed awkwardly on one of my wings.

"Stop it!" shouted Link. "You're alive because of her!"

"What happened to her face! All that blood-"

"Did you see what she did? How she tore into those beasts?"

"Like an animal!"

"I think I saw her tear one with her teeth!"

Other villagers had come out. Through my feathers I could make out the gaping face of Bo. I looked to the left of him and saw Ilia with her hands to her mouth, her eyes following the trail of blood down my front to my face, and then back down to my blood covered hands.

Link was infuriated. "She's still the Hanna you know, and she did all that to save you! How can you-"

"No."

He looked to me as I got to my feet, folding my wings in and wrapping my arms tight about me.

"Hanna?"

"It's my fault those dragons came here," I said. I couldn't stop shaking. It was like when the spell had first broken and I had trembled for days in the darkness of my home.

Link frowned. "Do you mean you listened to the green man? Did you do what he told you to do?"

I shook my head. "No. I told him no. So he sent these monsters to prove me wrong, to make me..."

Of course, no one knew what we were talking about, so they naturally latched on to the only sentence they had understood.

"You mean that hell broke loose because of you?" It was worse coming from Bo's mouth. He had always been so laid back and kind to me. Seeing the bear-like look of the waterwheel man reflected on his face almost made me run then and there.

"But she took care of it!" said Ilia. "Didn't...you?" I could see it was hard for her to look at me, covered in blood, clawed, fanged. I wondered just how monster-like I appeared to her.

But no one seemed to want to listen to anything in my defense.

"My home is destroyed, my shop desolated, and my husband nearly killed?" The shop lady's eyes had gone wide with fury.

"Talon might be dying as we speak, I don't care what she did!"

"Get her out of here!"

"Be reasonable-" But a look from Rusl and Link closed his jaw. He exchanged looks with the bloodied swordsman before scoffing, yanking his sword out of the ground, and turning around to grab my arm.

"Come on, Hanna."

The village let out a collective gasp at his casual touch.

"Din, be careful, Link!"

"What are you doing?"

I let him pull me along, doing everything I could not to cry.

"Link, what about Talon?" I asked. I needed to be told he'd be alright, I needed to know he wasn't dead.

Before he could respond, something heavy and wet smashed hard against the back of my head, nearly sending me face first into his back. I pulled back my hand from my head covered in mud.

Without looking back, I knew who had thrown it.

I wished my perspicacity hadn't shown it. I would have rather not known.

"And don't you dare come near our children again!"  
>Link tugged on my arm. "Come on."<p>

Without another word, he pulled me up the trail to his house, sword still clenched tightly in his hand. A part of me wondered if he intended to use it on me—to finish me off where the villagers wouldn't have to witness the gore.

I could still hear the villagers, though. The words were lost to the distance and trees, but the malice was clear. Who knew how many more were injured. Rusl had had quite a few wounds on him, and I had yet to see the shopkeepers husband or Malo and Collin. And what of Rusl's wife and her baby?

Link pushed me towards the padlock. Gramps and Epona both started and snorted at the scent of blood.

"Saddle your horse."

I didn't ask why. I just went to the trunk hidden besides Link's tree and pulled out the worn, too big saddle and saddle blanket, only using the arm hooked to my bad shoulder if I had to. Gramps fidgeted uncomfortably and kept trying to turn to get a good look at me, which made it difficult, but I soon had the last strap tugged on as far as it would go and Link was walking back in to the natural made horse pen with saddle bags over his shoulder, though I didn't remember him leaving. I stared as he got out his own saddle from the trunk.

"What are you doing?"

"You didn't expect me to ride bareback, did you?"

I faltered with one foot in the stirrup and a hand on the saddle horn. "I don't understand..."

And I couldn't understand. My ears were still full of the distant murmurs of the villagers and my eyes still full of dragon blood.

Did we have to go that far for Link to kill me? But of course. He wouldn't want a bloodstain nearby to remind himself.

He didn't look at me when he answered, which only seem to verify my paranoid thoughts.

"Just get on your horse."

I did so, grunting a bit at the pain in my shoulder. The woods before us were awfully quiet, as though all the wildlife had fled the scene. Gramps looked sideways at me, ears high.

"It's okay," I murmured, patting his neck. "You'll be fine."

His ears lowered.

Link led us off at a quick trot which soon fell into a gallop. My old horse had to struggle to keep pace with Link's mare, which was almost twice his size in muscle alone and half his age, but soon he had a good rhythm and was huffing along after her. The joints of my wings to my back started to ache with the effort to hold my heavy wings against the jolting ups and downs of Gramps's trott.

I lost track of time as we rode. For someone who's moments might be their last, I wasn't appreciating it as much as I thought I should. Instead, I just felt tired, hurt, and heavy with disappointment and despair. I kept remembering the look in the shopkeeper's eyes, in Talon's father's, and the way Talon had looked lying there beneath the tree. I kept remembering the blood on my claws and the way the water had responded to me when I had reached out to it. Had that been a part of the power the green man had hinted to? But it didn't matter anymore, because I'd probably soon be dead.

Link led us clip-clopping across a wood and rope bridge slung across a mist filled ravine, and I peered over the edge with a morbid interest. I had flown, hadn't I? I wonder if I could fly down to the bottom—and then back up—or if I cared.

The mist seemed to follow us. It curled up from the cavern in tendrils, and by the time we had reached the other side, swaths of it hugged the ankles of our horses, despite the sun still burning above us. I wondered if I should think that strange, then slipped back into my thoughts.

Memories had returned to me. I remembered my mother's gentle hand over mine as she guided it through a bowl of water. I remembered Father clapping to a prancing pony made of water the size of his hand. I remembered being held aloft as dozens of water ponies ran beneath me like outstretching waves to the river that ran besides our home. Their manes had swirled with the clay-colored dust of the sandstone cliffs. Father had called me blessed and talented. Mother had simply smiled. Perhaps she could only think of what a waste it was that the last of our kind would end up an unappreciated prodigy as well.

I lost myself in memories of water magic until Gramps ambled to a stop behind Epona. I blinked back to the present to see clear ripples of another spring lapping through the mist and onto Gramps's yellowed hooves. Link dismounted with a splash. I could hear a small waterfall and could just see it through the fog that had encompassed us with the coming of evening. The last rays of sunlight reflected gold off the fog above us and I thought it better to be enchanted with it, rather than to pay attention to the man who made his way over to me, sword buckled to his back.

"This seems a decent enough place to kill me." I said, for it really was.

He didn't stop walking, but I heard him snort. "Din, your so morbid. We're spending the night here. This is another light spirit's spring, so the water should get the bloodstains out and help us heal."

I flinched back when he reached for my wrist. "Why did you bring me here?"

"Come on, Hanna, stop being stupid. Your life is mine, remember? The light spirit won't hurt you, and we had to leave or else the others would have."

"But I'm the reason all your friends and family almost died! Stop pretending like it didn't happen!"

"I'm not." His voice had turned soft. "You're hurt. Get down."

"No."

"Hanna, it's all right. I'm not going to hurt you. It wasn't your fault."

"But the green man, he said if I wouldn't come, he'd prove to me you were monsters."

"And why didn't you go with him?"

I shivered. When had it gotten so cold? And when had my clothes gotten so wet? Oh yeah, back at the river in Ordon.

"I already told you, I want to be good. And if my gods are going to kill off humans to avenge my kind, it's not worth it. You can't fix death with more death."

"As I thought. Now, come on. I'll help you down."

He sounded as though he were trying to coax a frightened animal, and it both confused me and calmed me. What had happened to the angry boy who had told me to not get blood on his floor? To slit my throat instead of my wrists?

I gingerly slung my leg over and slipped down. His hands caught me around my waist as my legs proved unsteady. The hot tingle ran through my blood once more at his touch.

After that, he fetched a rag from his saddle bags and pulled me through the gold tinted mist to the center of the spring, where he knelt me down and went to gently clean the gash in my shoulder. As he did so, I watched the blood seep away from my fingers to show short fingernails once more rather than claws. I felt out the fangs in my mouth and found they had shrunk, but were still there, and sighed.

"It's not your fault." he said.

I didn't mean to meet his eyes when he said that. I turned my face away when I did.

"They blamed me." I said.

"Parents tend to lose their senses when it comes to their kids."

"Link, any sensible person would lose their senses if dragons flew down from nowhere trying to eat them."

"Granted." He pulled back when I hissed, but his touch became noticeably more gentle. "They did the same when they saw me too. When monsters kidnapped the village children, I got turned into a wolf chasing after them. When I returned they treated me just like the monsters that had kidnapped the children, never minding the fact I looked nothing like them."

I rubbed some of the water on my face to wash the blood from there. "So you still think I'm like you and that's why you're being so nice, how quaint."

"It's called empathy, Hanna, is your kind incapable of it?"

"Of course not!"

"Then stop freaking out already and just accept the fact that none of this is your fault. It's not your fault for those dragons, it was the green man who sent them, and it's not your fault that your people are dead-"

"But it will be if I don't do something—according to him." I added quickly. "I mean, if I don't do anything to try and bring them back..."

"But you already said you can't do that."

"I won't."

My shoulder stung and I bit my lip to stop from crying out as he rolled up my sleeve. The gold had seeped away from the mist about us.

He paused, bare fingers hesitating just a breath from my underarm. I could feel his heat.

"No one can expect to make things right by killing one race in order to bring back another. You said so yourself. Hold still, I'll be right back."

He was back before I even had a moment to collect my thoughts in his absence. He knelt down besides me in the shallow water and opened a tin of some strange odd green stuff that stung on my open flesh. With one hand I rinsed out my mouth of any left over blood as he wrapped bandages around it.

"They didn't get you anywhere else, did they?"

"I don't know." I said faintly. I hadn't really been paying attention.

Fire raced along my skin as his fingers lifted my long, black hair and his eyes searched me for wounds. He found a few scrapes I hadn't noticed on my shins and set about to bandaging them too, even though I thought that, with my healing speed, they'd probably be just fine by the morning. But as I watched, his dark blond hair swung back and forth across his face, brushing his high cheekbones and leaving a few strands caught in his eyelashes.

My heart pounded in my ears, but I couldn't think. Village, dragons, green man, death, gods, imprint, mate...

"I'm so confused."

He tied off the last bandage.

"Maybe you should stop taking everything so seriously and just get it in your head already that no one is out to kill you."

"But everything feels so unreal, it's like I haven't been able to, I don't know, see or understand anything since that day that the spell broke. It's all been like a dream."

"It has, hasn't it?" He fell back onto his rear in the water and folded his legs. "Maybe we should just start from scratch then."

"Scratch?"

"You know, forget about all the god and death stuff. If that green guy pops up again, I'll just skewer him and we'll call it good, how about that?"

I stared down into the water at my now clean, white hands.

"You seem a lot happier now." I said. "It's kind of weird."

He didn't say anything to this. For the next little while as the last dredges of day seeped out of the fog and left us in the grey-blue of early night, the sound of the waterfall made up for the silence. A bit a ways I could hear the crickets starting up again. The fog made my skin feel clammy, but not uncomfortably, and I thought I could even see it clear a bit.

When a small breeze brushed through, a handful of stars could be seen through a clear patch in the mist above us.

Father had always been so happy. Though mother had been more grim, he had always told me that life wasn't life if you spent you're whole time dreading it. Might as well just be dead. And on nights, when mother would sneak out into the darkness with father and whisper her fears to him, never thinking the walls of our home would be thin enough for me to hear, I'd hear his low voice murmuring the same distraction into her ears.

"Look at those stars, soft one. You'll never see them as beautiful as now."

I blinked and the mist covered up the stars once more. I closed my eyes to feel it on my eyelids. Slowly, I breathed it in—the night's vapor, the forest air, the fear, the memories of dragons, the confusion...

And then blew it away.

I let my tightly packed wings relax into the spring beneath m, and tipped back my head until I could feel the tip of my hair being weighed down by water.

And then I felt the embers of the fire in my blood. I could sense him there, sitting quietly, probably with his head tipped to the foggy roof above us.

...I didn't really hate him...

"Hey, Link..."

When I brought up my head, sure enough, he had had his head tipped back. Once I had his attention I put my hands to the water with a smile, calling for the cool river of power that I had found once more in order to scoop a filly, head first, from the waters. It struggled out on long, knobbly new-born legs of water the length of my forearm. It's mane formed from the mist, its hide from the sheen of the water, and it's eyes from the faceted surface tension of water.

Link gasped and his eyes lit up with a child-like wonder I had never seen, and the sight made my heart soar.

Carefully, I brought the baby horse of crystalline water to its tiny hooves. Then, I blew on its nose and it left my touch, alight with life.

"I remembered a bit," I said, as I watched the little filly trot atop the water's surface to sniff the smile blooming on Link's face. "Back there, while I was fighting. Each of my kind are blessed with an aptitude for something, whether it be for healing, casting spells, physical strength, or a control over an element. My mother found mine was water when I was younger, and though my father said I was the most talented he had ever heard of, I was only ever interested in making ponies." I smiled. "I liked ponies. We had a whole heard of wild ones that lived by us."

The horse nuzzled his cheek with its watery nose and he laughed. The sound sent a jolt through my stomach that I thought would send me floating. For a moment, I really could believe that it all really was okay, and that it wasn't my fault. In that moment, knowing something as simple as a water horse could make his face light up like that, I felt real.

He gingerly put his hand to the baby horse, which stepped into his touch.

"This is beautiful, Hanna. I had been wondering about that...after I saw what you did, but..." he looked back at me. "This is what you really like doing, isn't it? Making ponies out of water like you're five?"

"Rather than what? Drowning and strangling dragons?"

"With water noodles." he said, all too seriously, letting go of the pony to wiggle his arms like tendrils.

I laughed.

And that's when I broke.

The laugh turned into a weird, burbling cry. My eyes burned with tears, and when the first dripped off my chin the pony melted back into the water without so much as a ripple.

He didn't say anything, nor did he hug me. But he didn't leave either. He just sat there, bellybutton deep in water and his hands tucked into his lap. At one point he reached out and held one of my hands. The effect his touch had almost startled me out of crying, but it soon became a gentle warmth that just made me cry all the harder.


	11. Flight

**I feel like I'm running in place today, guys. I can't seem to get anything out on the page for either my job or myself, and all I've gotten is rejection letters. I almost just want to give up for the day and try again tomorrow. Are any of these stories even worth anything? man I sound pathetic thinking that. Don't let my boy know I said that, or he'll flail me with his eyeballs. **

Chapter 11

The next day dawned bright and warm, without a speck of the thick, butter-like fog of the night before. Link had shown me how to make a bed out of the carpet-like moss that grew on the trees and a saddle blanket, and I had slept remarkably well, all things considering, though it may have just been because he had been beside me to chase away all dreams and nightmares. We ate a dry breakfast of biscuits and jerky while the horses munched on grass and fern besides us, then set out on our way out of the forest because we had nothing else to do. Link was, once more, in his strangely chipper mood, and when I asked where exactly we were going, he shrugged and didn't seem in the least bit bothered.

"I'm just happy to be moving, I've been getting the itch for ages." he said, when I asked once more into his strange mood. "And we better give Ordon some distance until everything calms down, at least."

Strange fellow, Link.

The closer we neared the edge of the forest, the more nervous I became. I could still remember that feverish sprint through monsters.

But as we broke through the trees and onto the wide expanse, all that we met was bright sunshine and birdsong. In the distance I could see funny balls running on chicken like legs through the grass.

Link threw his arms out and tipped his head back to the sun, eyes closed. "Aw, yeah. I've missed that."

We had only taken a few steps into the field when he pulled up sharp on Epona and turned to me. I fully expected him to usher me back and unsheathe his sword, but he just smiled at me as he had at the water pony I had made for him the night before.

"Actually, want to try some flying? All this open space is just perfect!"

I fidgeted. I had tried last night, after doing my business away in private, to fly as I had done back in the village. But, once more, I had just fallen on my face. Apparently, without something forcing me to move and not think, I was as land bound as ever.

And I didn't much care to face plant in front of him...

What I wouldn't give just to be back home doing laundry. Dream come true, right there.

But Link wouldn't be deterred, even after I explained to him my tendency to just flip over when I tried to fly. Instead he suggested I get a running start on Gramps and try to lift off from there. It just sounded like a nightmare waiting to happen, but at the eager, child-like look on his face, I obediently lifted up my great black wings and kicked Gramps into motion. Instantly the wind caught up underneath them and I found myself clinging onto the saddle horn, my toes wiggling through my boots for the stirrups.

"Let go!"

"I'm gonna die!"

"No you won't! You're not even going that fast! Why don't you try flapping?"

"I'm gonna die!"

I heard him laughing—_laughing_, the bastard—and then he kicked Epona up behind me and slapped Gramps's rear. Hard.

The poor old stallion whinnied in surprise and put in a quick burst of speed. The force of the wind against my wings was enough to tear my fingers from the saddle horn. I could almost feel the earth rushing up to break every bone in my body, feel the heat of my humiliation as Link looked down and laughed at me.

Instinctively, I started flapping, more out of alarm then self-preservation. When the ground never came and I found myself tipping forward towards the flying dark grey tail of Gramps. A familiar swooping sensation in my stomach came to me at the feel of air instead of dirt beneath me.

Link gave a whoop. "That's right! Now higher!"

"I'm still gonna die!"

"You flew back at Ordon, didn't you?"

"Shut up!"

But he just laughed more at me, pulling Epona beneath me as though I were a kite and he held onto the string, his face up to me.

"Higher!"

And because I feared crashing into him and his horse as much as I did the ground, I scooped my wings down with a heavy pump, flinging air beneath me, feeling it between my feathers. Up, scoop, up, scoop.

Before the excitement could catch up with me, I found myself sweeping over the few old trees that speckled the field, feeling the chill sweep down and tug the tie holding back my hair. Long streams of raven black slipped past my face.

Link had to kick Epona into a full sprint to keep up with me now, leaving a confused and winded Gramps in the dust.

I took in the blue around me and the rug of trees that spread out besides me. I could see a mountain, crowned with a flaming arch of burning rock, the steeples of the castle I had spent my human life beneath, and the distant sheen of sun upon water.

So, this was flying, then. I had finally grown up.

A memory fluttered through my mind, but something else had distracted me. Up ahead, perched in the air with his wings out as though to balance him atop a pole, was the green man.

He beckoned to me, and I could just make out the young bark tan of his face.

I pulled back, flapping furiously to stay airborne-

And ended up overshooting and flipping head over heels. The sky and earth flipped and twirled in my vision, end over end, with the grassy plain growing closer and closer. My huge wings flopped uselessly at my side as I struggled to catch myself. I shouldn't have gone so high my first time! I shouldn't have listened to that stupid Link!

There came a mind numbing thump of flesh on flesh and a jostling thwack as everything went suddenly still. For a moment, all I could do was try to remember how to breathe and stare up at the sky. When a groan came from beneath me, I scrambled away as though on fire.

Link had caught me and fallen to the ground with me. He now laid where I once was, spread eagle and expression pained. A ways off, Epona snorted and pranced in circles, seeming frantic of her rider's sudden disappearance.

"Goddesses, I didn't break anything, did I?"

"I don't think so." he said, more like groaned. "Din, your heavy."

I scowled. "Anything's heavy when it falls fifty feet."

"Was that really how high you were?"

"I don't know, why did you coax me up that high? And I didn't ask you to catch me!"

"Sure, sure." he rolled onto his side, hand to his chest. He coughed and groaned again. "Farore."

Since I knew he wasn't squashed, I looked to the sky, searching for the green man where I had seen him. But once more, he had vanished, and I felt distinctly annoyed. Was he like some stalker or something? Would he follow me wherever I go and sic monsters on any human who dared to draw near?

The thought almost made me stand up then and there and attempt to take off into the air to hunt him down.

Instead, I told Link of what I had seen. His jolly nature instantly grew somber.

"Who is this 'green man,' do you suppose?" he asked.

"He just said he was a servant of the ones who created me."

"But he's not of the same species as you, correct."

"Yeah. He's half my size, even."

"Huh." he sat back on his hands, looking up to where I had said I'd seen him.

For a minute we sat there, staring up into the sky, waiting for our horses to make their way back over to us, before Link somehow persuaded me back onto Gramps's back to try it all over again.

"Don't give me that look, you were amazing! You can't tell me you didn't like it."

I just pouted at him all the more. No. I couldn't tell him that I didn't like it. In fact, I loved it. But I wasn't too fond of needing him to catch me in case I fell. While I healed quickly (the gash on my shoulder had already closed up enough to not punish me for using my arm), Link didn't, and I don't know how I could live knowing I had hurt him.


	12. Monsters

**ugh, this western romance I have to write for a client is so boring! I'm so afraid she won't like it when I'm done writing it. *sigh* I just want to write my Godless story...**

**Please review!**

Chapter 12

That night we camped out on the edge of Hyrule field, beneath the umbrella like boughs of maples. He had two fish hung over a fire between us and I happily munched on a block of cheese. I thought I could see a return of happy times for me as he turned fish over and asked me questions into my dreams and expressing surprise each time at their accuracy.

"So, do all you guys have dreams about random people?"

"I wouldn't say random,"

"Why me then?"

I shrugged, stuffing another mouthful of cheese in my mouth to distract my body from blushing. "Guess there's many mysteries in the world." He took out a fish and pricked it with his knife. Unsatisfied, he jabbed the skewer back into the ground and left the fish to sizzle some more. "Is your favorite thing to do really laundry?"

I looked up from my cheese with a frown. "Where'd that come from?"

"Ilia told me and I told her you were just being nice."

"Well, no, I really do like laundry. Most housework, actually."

He just looked at me blankly for a moment. Then he shook his shaggy blond head and pointed a finger at me.

"You're weird."

I scowled. "That's not very nice."

"Well, you are. What kind of person likes cleaning? I only do it so I don't have to smell myself and also if anyone important bursts into my house they won't think the great Hero of whatever is a slob."

"You care that much about what people think?"

"Not really. It's not like many even know what I did. You know, with Ganondorf, twilight and all. Hero whatever, after all." He pulled out the fish again, poked it, then handed it to me. "Ladies first."

I took the almost too-hot stick and went to blowing on my broiled fish. It stared back at me with a melted eye, and I found myself staring at it despite myself. I could still see its pupil and iris. Shouldn't that creep me out?

The stick it had been skewered with had been peeled of its bark and felt smooth in my grip. I ran my fingertips along the knobs as I finished off my cheese.

"What do you like doing?" I asked. "Obviously not cleaning."

"Reading. Books and all that. Maybe sometimes draw, though I don't know if I'm any good."

"Not really fair to judge yourself before you know."

"Hey, I meant that I'm not going to make any money off it it soon."

I pinched my fish and hissed. Still too hot. "Okay, books. Not as weird as cleaning, I admit."

"Perhaps the reason for reading them is."

"How so?"

He had already taken a bite from his piping hot fish and had gone to blowing it in his mouth. When he finally managed to swallow he said, "I like to hate them."

I stared. "So you actually hate reading?"

"No, that's not what I mean. I like hating the people, in the book." He had his chin tilted to the side, letting his long bangs shield his face. "See, um, you can't really hate real people. That would be bad, wouldn't it? But fake people, well...it's hurting them none."

"But why do you like hating them?" In spite of myself, I felt a small smirk coming on. "Are you secretly dying to be a megalomaniac serial killer?"

When he didn't instantly burst into protests—in fact, not saying anything at all, my smile fell. I could feel an icky dark feeling sinking into my stomach, something akin to apprehension, and another akin to pity.

It was some time later when he said, "I don't want to be a killer."

I pinched my fish again. Just right. "But?" I took a bite.

"Look, can we change the subject? I've only known you for a week and I'd like to not scare off the bird-girl I promised to babysit."

"Even if you did scare me, I couldn't leave. You have my life, after all." If only he knew.

"When you say it like that it makes you sound like you still hate me."

I lowered my fish, finger brushing the smooth stick once more. My heart felt as though it had thudded up to my throat, and I felt a sudden need to tell him the truth.

"Um, Link..."

"Yeah?"

Who was I kidding? I wasn't that much of an idiot.

"These fish are really good."

"Oh. Thanks."

"And its okay if you feel like tearing things apart." I picked a bit at the fish's dry eye to avoid looking at him. "After fighting for so long just to be sent home as though nothing had happened...I'd want to tear into something too."

In a blink, his tone had changed to something cold once more.

"Don't talk like you can understand me."

Reflexively, I curled my wings around my shoulders, as though to prepare for a blow.

"Sorry."

"It's not okay, Hanna. The only difference between a hero and a villain is as slim as to be nonexistent. Inside of me is a monster, and only me swinging my sword in the right direction has made me any use to this world. I don't want anything telling me it's okay to hate, that it's okay to want to kill and slaughter, especially not by a creature who's been hunted down by the goddesses and tears dragons apart with her bare hands."

I recoiled back, fear mounting. When had this come back to me? What had I done?  
>"I'm sorry." I said, though it came out as a squeak. I could feel my eyes starting to burn. "I didn't mean to—I didn't mean to scare anyone."<p>

"Like you could scare me." he said, and the harsh way he threw the words at me made me feel as though I should be insulted by that, and in an instant my surprised remorse turned to indignation.

"I already said I'm sorry, I didn't make you save my life!"

"And some gratitude you showed. I could have just easily killed you and been done with it."

Something within me twanged at that. It almost felt like real, physical pain, as though a charlie horse had come on in the center of my chest. It made me a bit dizzy, but I ignored it and stood up.

"I can't keep up with you." I said through my teeth, both against the pain, hurt, and anger. "One minute your friendly and jolly and the next you're this-this angsty, scared little boy!"

"I am not scared!"

"You just told me you're afraid of becoming a monster!"

"No I didn't!"  
>I threw down my half eaten fish to tug on my hair. "Ugh! Goddesses, even with only half of my memories I'm not as dumb as you!"<br>"I've already told you you couldn't possible understand, of course I'd seem dumb to you-!"

"And what made you so high and mighty to be above any understanding? What made you so special from everyone else?"

"Special?" he was on his feet now. "Are you saying I think I'm special because I got to murder people the goddesses were too lazy to kill themselves? Because I got to watch people suffer for no good reason? Because I got to fear for my life every fucking day? Yeah! I'm special! Throw down the red carpet and let me walk on it, I'll feel right at home!"

The sarcasm did it. I picked the fish and stick once more and chucked it at him. It slapped him on the chest, but before I could see his reaction I had turned and stomped away, pumping my wings furiously, ignoring the sore muscles I had practiced with all day. My lift off wasn't as graceful as I wanted it to be, but with a jump I was able to get more lift beneath me to climb and reach for the air currents I could feel sweeping in from the north.

I didn't get as far as I wanted (which was on the other side of the planet), but my tender flight muscles did allow me to get to a large tree perfect for perching in and far enough that the campfire was just a big lamplight in the distance.

Anyone would have seen I was only trying to make him feel better, but no, it was almost like he didn't want comforting, like he wanted to hurt all by himself. If he thought he was being noble he wasn't, he was just being a bipolar jerkweed whose moods swung all over the place. How could I have imprinted on this guy? How could he have been anyone's soulmate? How could he even take care of a family when he obviously couldn't take care of his own emotional health?

And what was all that about?! It wasn't like I brought it up, he did! Telling me why his liking to read was weird. He could have just left it at he liked to read, he didn't have to go into detail and then get all upset about it.

Stupid meanie...

"Is your mate not to your liking?"

By now, the surprise of hearing the green man's voice out of the blue had worn off. I almost expected to hear him every time I found myself alone, now. It also didn't even phase me how he knew about my imprinting. Weirdo might as well be omniscient.

"Go away before I tear off your face."

He tiched disapprovingly. Out of the corner of my eye I watched him sling himself over a branch just a bit higher than mine like a lazy monkey with wings. His green camouflage worked even better at night, and I felt a bit impressed with myself that I could pick him out at all.

"So unbecoming of you, little fledgeling. I had only been trying to protect you."  
>"And somehow siccing dragons on the people who took me in did that, hmm? Brilliant."<p>

"That swordsman was the only one who should have taken you in. The others are mere complications."

"Are you saying that because I imprinted on him?"

"Exactly. Though I can't say I approve." He tittered once more, sounding a bit like a hen clucking. "To think one of my gods blessed children imprinting on something as low as a human, no matter his origins, and a damaged one at that. But, things can't be helped, and he did take up the responsibility more than willingly."

"Okay, what are you talking about?"

When he smirked at me I realized I had turned to face him curiously without even intending to. In attempts to recover my lost need for righteous vengeance, I lifted up my fingers and imagined him as one of the dragons. The image was just enough to get my claws to extend. He just chuckled, as though I were a kitten instead of said dragon-killer.

"You, princess fledgeling, are adorable."

"And you aren't leaving."

"But you're so cute when you're confused!" he paused. "Why are you confused? You have realized your imprint on him, haven't you? The gods have chosen him specifically after all-"

"Well they can take it back, because I don't want it! That man's an asshole!"  
>"I agree, I agree," he bobbed his head. "But he has protected you as none other could. If he wasn't practically human, I'd even say he might have a little chance of being worthy of you."<p>

I snorted and sat back, unable to hold the image of the dragon for too long and keep my claws out. "Din, shows what our gods know. Like a human would ever fall in love with a monster, especially a human like that one," I looked back over the plain to the flickering of fire. "Though, imprint or not, if you even dare to threaten him like you did the villagers-"

"Oh, princess, I wouldn't even dream of it!" he practically crowed. "Endangering your life like that is unthinkable!"

"Endangering?"

He looked at me pityingly, but not as one who looks on another with compassion, but rather as though he looked at someone unbearably stupid it hurt. "Goodness, you really are a fledgling. Little bird, to your kind, heartbreak is lethal."

"I know that." I said irritably. "But that's only if he falls in love with someone else. Father died and my mother's still around."

"That's because she had you." he said matter-of-fact. "Love still held her heart together. It wouldn't be very convenient if babes and children were left parent-less just because one parent decided to kick the bucket."

I wasn't thinking about the convenience, though. An ice cold needle had pricked its way into my chest and I found myself clenching the branch beneath me.

"Wait, I'm the reason my mother's still alive?"

"It's touching, isn't it?"

"But I'm not with her anymore, she considers me as good as dead!" I could feel the chills crawling up my back and dropping lead weights into my stomach. "If I had known leaving would have killed her-"

"Would have? Fledgling, she's been dead for days. Didn't you hear me when I said you were the last of your kind?"

My throat lumped and locked. I tried to choke past it, though, to deny what he said, to find some hole in his excuse.

"But I thought she didn't count because she had smothered her traits and become a human."

"How positively desperate of you to think that."

"Don't talk to me like that!"

"Fledgling, I only serve to tell you truth."

"Well you're lying then! Me leaving for a few days couldn't kill my mother, you don't know her!"

"Ah, Hanna, don't say things you know aren't true."

That's right. The green man had known my mother long before me. He had even said so before.

I pulled back, almost tipping off the branch. My wings spread out to flap me back on just in time and I clung to it so hard I could feel the bark cutting in beneath my fingernails.

"I will leave you to your...meditations, my princess." He bowed low to me with a swoop of feathers and leaves. "I will come to assist you on your quest later."

"I'm on no quest!"

But he had already gone, and good too, for my last attempt at defiance had been a weak one. 'I'm on no quest', really? Couldn't I have thought of something more profound?

Yet, really, it didn't really matter. Nothing really mattered, because mother was dead. She couldn't be dead, but from the beginning I was the last. She should be waiting for me back at home, surely, and yet she probably wouldn't, just as it probably wouldn't rain fire in the morning.

I trembled against my tree and tried to figure out if I wanted to weep or scream.


	13. Mistakes

**Thank you, to all of you who have left reviews and expressed your support of this story. Here's an update, a little extra early, as a treat. I hope you like it. ^.^**

Chapter 13

It didn't take long for the warm instinct in my breast to start up again and start pulling me back to the distant campfire where Link was. I did my best to ignore it, and made as far as to doze off in my tree. A wolf howling in the distance woke me up, though, and before I had a fully formed thought in my drowsy head I had launched off of the branch like a cat and took to flight. When I landed just outside the reach of the fire's glow I saw no grey wolf with fire in its eyes. I only saw the top of Link's dirty blond hair, a heavy saddle blanket swathed over him.

I considered just going back to my tree, but a breeze of cool night air brushed up goosebumps on my skin and I drew near to the fire. He seemed asleep. Right as I reached Gramps, who had taken to curling up next to my bed like some sort of oversized dog, I heard a moan and froze. When I wasn't immediately set upon by a grouchy Link, I tip toed over to see that, yes, his eyes were still closed.

He didn't look too happy though.

Link moaned again, though this time it sounded like he was really uncomfortable, and his sleeping face was screwed up in something that could have been fear if his jaw weren't clenched. A fine sheen of sweat glittered off his forehead.

And then I noticed the prickled threads of the blanket shivering along his body.

Something within me started to ache for him and, after crouching down in front of him to make sure he wasn't sick or something, I fetched my saddle blanket from Gramps side and set it out besides Link, using my huge wings as blankets. I watched his face only a foot away from mine as it twisted and scowled. Then, after a brief moment of calm that got me thinking that maybe he really was okay, his lips parted ever so slightly and he let out a small whimper.

All the yelling, all the abuse he had thrown at me earlier, became meaningless. Hushing softly to him, I spread out one of my black wings over him.

"It's okay," I whispered.

Just as the first tear leaked out from under his closed eyes, his shuddering breaths fell into the easy rhythm of sleep and his face relaxed. Shivering, I drew a bit closer in hopes to get more under my own wing while keeping it over him. Oh feeling another cool breeze, I told myself that he was going to kill me anyways, and so cautiously lifted up his blanket and slipped under.

His warmth melted the cold away and me with it.

The moment I inhaled his scent the warm instinct within me rose to a purr, easing me back into a doze and then into the deepest, best sleep I had had in a very long time.

I woke up when I felt cold, which just pulled me out of my comfortable darkness to realize that annoying, bright sunshine was pushing its way through my eyelids. I groaned and curled into myself, but the damage was done. I wasn't getting any more sleep.

Rubbing grit out of my eyes, I sat up. The joints in my wings crackled as I stretched them high with my arms.

"Sometimes I wonder why those things don't tip you over."

Through bleary eyes I saw the back of Link bent over something. I rubbed my eyes harder.

"Morning."

"Same to you."

"Do we have any of those biscuits left?" Having only gotten half of the fish last night, I felt ravenous.

"That's what I'm looking for now. Ah." He turned and tossed one onto my lap. "Oh, and, um...I'm sorry. For the way I acted last night, I...I really shouldn't have...okay, I was a real asshole."

"Yep." I took a bite into the biscuit.

"And, uh, thanks for...keeping me warm."  
>I made a noncommittal grunting noise, hoping that would make him drop the subject. I didn't even really want to think about it.<p>

"But look, I'm going to make it up to you, for being a jerk and all. I know you like water, so, how about a trip to the lake today? We could do some fishing and cook up a whole feast!"

It sounded all right, but I had stopped paying attention at 'make it up,' because standing a ways a way, almost completely blended into the green of the trees at the edge of the field, stood the green man. I felt more than knew that he was waiting for me.

"What are you looking at?"

I pointed him out, biting my lip. Link looked but didn't seem to see anything, for he looked back at me, frowning.

"It's that green man." I stood up and brushed the crumbs off of my skirt. "Let's go."

"Wait, that's the man who set all those dragons on Ordon?" In a heartbeat his expression turn feral. "No, show me where he is."

"Get on your horse, he'll just fly off the moment he sees you coming."

"And you're just going to let him go, then? Why don't you take care of him like you did the dragons?"

This startled me. Kill the green man? At the look on my face he instantly sobered and the wild look in his eyes died.

"Aw, Din, Hanna, I'm sorry."

I wanted to ask why, but my discomfort and horror had already closed up my throat. Killing monsters was hard enough, but killing a living, breathing person just like myself? I went to tying Gramps's old, too-big saddle onto him. Link was quiet, but followed suit, whistling over his mare and slinging on his saddle and bags.

"You know, you don't have to deal with me. Your life may be mine, technically, but as long as you promise not to follow after that guy I'm cool with you doing anything."

I looked over at him, a foot in the stirrup and a hand on Gramps's mane. Link's head was bowed against his saddle and his shoulders had slumped. He had his sword and shield slung onto his back, and for once they looked like they might actually weigh on him.

"I'm not a pleasant person to live with. I'm...I'm really screwed up, you know."

"I don't think you're screwed up." I said quietly, a little afraid, and at the same time a little sad for him as I remembered the way he had looked last night, tortured by nightmares.

"Hanna, I just asked you to kill a man without even thinking, and last night I tore into you just because you tried to be nice." He looked over at me, and I barely made out the stormy blue eyes through his golden bangs. "I'm not a hero. I'm a grouchy, messed up, bitter man." He turned back to his horse. "You know Ilia asked me to marry her when I got home?"

On remembering the awkward, almost sad look she had given me on asking if I liked Link, I inwardly winced. "Why didn't you say yes?"

He snorted, and with one smooth motion he threw himself onto his horse. "As I am now, I'd make the worst husband on the planet."

"But didn't you love her?" Even as I said the words I felt a twinge of pain like last night in my chest, and ignored it.

"Hanna, actually..." he hesitated. "I don't think I can love anyone. I don't know if I ever have, romantically, that is. Another reason you and I should probably part ways."

He kicked Epona forward. Before she could fall into a gallop I leaped for the reigns and held her back. He looked down at me dryly.

"What?"

"I'm never going to leave you." I said harshly, and even as I said it I knew it was true. With my mother dead, Link was the closest thing I had to a family, or anything, really. "And you'll regret leaving me before you even know what I am to you."

"What you—you're nothing to me."

Though he said it as a statement without any inflection to offend, the pain in my chest came back for a quick stab and I winced.

"No, I'm not. My gods sent me to you. I don't know why, but I do know they can't be all that bad if they're trusting someone like you, and no, you aren't evil Link, so stop implying it. It's irritating."

"Let go of my horse." he said wearily.

"Did you even hear a word I said?"

"Yes, I'd just like to get going is all, you're overreacting. I wasn't planning on leaving you, I thought we were going to the lake."

I blushed. Aw gal, and he couldn't've stopped me from saying all that mushy crap?

Fuming, I slapped the backside of Epona and savored his shout as she bolted. I humphed and slung myself onto Gramps back who, if I didn't know better, looked just as satisfied as I felt with my actions.

"Come on, old man."

"Not so fast, fledgeling."

The green man, who had been far on the other side of the field a moment before, now had a hand on my calf and was smiling, acorn eyes twinkling.

"We have an appointment still."

"I don't recall agreeing to do anything with you." I said angrily. "And I thought I already said no, don't you have better things to do?"

"No." he said, as though stating the weather. "I was created for you, the one who will save her people and reunite them with their gods."

"Sucks to be you, now let go."

His hand had wrapped tightly around my ankle as he spoke. "You are making a grave mistake, my lady."

"Apparently not, since I'm simply going after the guy the gods supposedly hooked me up with, soul mate and all that shit."

"Language, fledgling."

"Damn hell fuck."

He grimaced. "Look, your mate has served his purpose. You are alive and the guardians of this world have given you a time of probation. He has given you your chance, now you should take it. Don't you want to have a family again?"

"I supposedly have a mate already, don't I?"

"Ah, but his gods would never allow their prized child, deformed as he is, to mate with the likes of you."

Another jolt of pain in my chest. My hand twitched to clasp at my chest, but I held it down. "Well, bad choice on our creator's part then, eh? Guess I won't be alive for long, then. Now let go before I scratch that soft baby face of yours like you deserve."

He let go with a scowl. "You are making a mistake."

"Hanna!"

I looked up to see Link pelting his way back towards us, sword at his side. In a whoosh of green feathers and wind the green man faded into the air and vanished.

Link pulled up sharp besides me.

"What did he want?"

I wrinkled my nose at the space where the green man had once been. "The usual. He only left because I threatened to scrape his face off."

"Maybe you should have. It wouldn't have killed him."

"Whatever." I kicked my horse forward and we set out across the field at a steady canter.


	14. Twilight

**Pretty please review!**

Chapter 14

Getting to the lake took longer than I expected and my crappy saddle hardly protected me from Gramps's bony bock, which could have claim to be the boniest back of all bony horse backs. Thus, most of the way, I found myself practicing my flying, which came easier to me the more I played with the air underneath my feathers. Link often turned around to watch, and occasionally he would dare me to a race, which I could just keep up with until my endurance ran out. Compared to the burly mare beneath him, I was nothing.

The sun had reached its zenith by the time we came around a rocky corner to an immense stone bridge. From my height in the air I could see the lake far below, glistening a dark green-blue.

I landed next to him as he dismounted and an exhausted Gramps caught up.

"I'm blaming you if my horse dies." I said.

"I wouldn't say that's fair, I'm surprised he's not dead already."

I reached to embrace my sweaty horse's muzzle and glowered at him. "Take that back."  
>"Forgive me, your horse is immortal."<p>

"His name is Gramps, not horse."

Link smiled at me as though holding back a laugh. "Pardon. Gramps."

I didn't like his attitude, but decided to forget it for the moment as I peered over the side of the stone bridge. The pillars it had been built upon had crumbled long ago, and it made my skin crawl to wonder what kept it up so high from the lake below.

"How did they build this thing?"

"I wonder the same thing." Link leaned on the old stonework besides me, expression soft. "Sometimes I wonder if it was someone other than Hylians who built this. I once met a strange race called the Oocca who legend says existed before the Hylians. They exist in the sky, the closest race to the gods. Maybe they did, though it beats me how."

"How did you meet them?" I asked, fascinated.

"Well, um, you see that gray cannon looking thing over on that island? Not the one in the colorful house, but the one on land."

I squinted out over the reflected sunlight off the lake's surface. The land that twined about the lake was narrow and scant, at best, and mostly rose up to cliff sides. Planks and docks made up almost half of the useable lakeside. But, sure enough, I picked out the stone cannon perched in the distance, looking more like a tipped over bell on chicken legs than a cannon to me.

"I was guided to that, in a way, by one of the Oocca, and that thing shot me up into the sky where their city is."

I stared. "No way."

But he looked serious. I just shook my head.

"No, seriously, that can't be true. Shot out of a cannon? Aren't those things suppose to be, I don't know, _explosive?_ Weapons of war? Shoot fiery lead balls of death? And then to shoot you up into the sky the g-force must have been incredible! You're eyes would have bled out, at least!"

"Um," he scratched the back of his head. "I only got, like, half of that. G-force?"

"You know, gravity? The force of gravity and the air's resistance against you?"

"..."

"You're not the brightest, are you?"

His face flushed. "I'm plenty smart—smart enough to solve ancient riddles and puzzles and out think monsters with decades of training on top of me!"

"Wow, calm down, no one is arguing that. Chill."

"I am relaxed. I'm just arguing my point."

I sighed heavily. Hair had weaseled its way out form my braid in the trip and stuck to my neck and back with sweat. I felt tired, hot, and was starting to get impatient for a good swim. "I guess I'll meet you down there then." I grabbed a hold of the railing and readied myself.

"Wait, you're not going to-"

I leaped up, flinging my wings wide and knocking him to the side with a feathery blast. I grinned. Dummy should have stepped back. Revenge for being a jerk. I guess I could forgive him now.

With a loud cheer I tipped over the side, feeling the lovely way the air slipped past like silk and tugged on my wings stretched back behind me. My stomach spread out at the release of earth and even though the wind slapping against my face made it hard to breathe, I felt like I had, for the first time in weeks, gotten enough air.

Because laundry wasn't the only thing I loved doing. I also loved to swim, but not just in shallow little streams. No. I loved water so deep I couldn't see the bottom, because beneath the surface, outer space waited.

The glass-like surface wrapped up to catch me. Memories of water bled across my eyes, of father and play and growth, but mostly of my mother's pale hands over mine as she whispered to me about water's soul.

I closed my eyes. But it wasn't till tendrils of water responding to my call reached up and swallowed me that I finally allowed myself to wrap around the hole in my chest where mother had once been.

I really was alone now.

But floating in the wonderfully cool water, nothing could beat that.

I sunk just enough to feel completely submerged, watching the bubbles of my breath rise to the surface, which broke up the sky above like a faceted sapphire, struck through with lines of crystal light. The water in this lake was breathtakingly clear, and I found myself diving deeper in amazement, happy to let the beauty wash me away.

Mother was dead. But that was okay. We would all die eventually, and I'd see her again. Her, and father.

Dead, floating. There needn't be a point.

When my lungs started to burn I reluctantly broke the surface for a breath. It was only when the hot sun touched my face that I realized how cold the water was, but I smiled up at it and tipped onto my back. Huge wings made floating on your back amazingly easy. I felt like my own boat.

I could hear the echoes of my own heartbeat reflected back to me by the water in my ears.

"I should build a house here," I said to myself. "Then I could just float around all day and eat fish. Yeah. And soak in the sun."

"Hanna! _Hanna!_"

I would have ignored him if he hadn't sounded so frantic. I tipped back upright, wings floating on the surface of the water like my own personal floaties to watch Link swim his way over to me. An idea hit me then and I grinned at my own genius. It would be fun! If I was lucky, he'd pee himself.

Taking a deep breath, I lifted my wings and speared back down into the depths of the water. From underneath I watched him paddle and, ignoring the squirms at the fact that he had removed his shirt to come in, I grabbed hold of the water and whispered my wishes and dreams into it. Bubbles flurried about me in perfect, glass-like baubles. I gathered them about me and reached for an almost invisible mane of fizz.

Just as he had started to dive, I rocketed up on a great pegasus of water, whose wings broke through the surface with the force of small whale. Water broke into the air like diamonds and the horse's hooves galloped across the rocky waves of the lake like solid land.

I laughed high and breathlessly. I could feel the magic of my mother in my veins and I could see through the watery muscles of my winged steed.

I was there when Link came spluttering back to the surface.

"I thought you were drowning, you numskull!"  
>And then he realized he had to look up at me and his jaw dropped. Sun shining through the horse I had spread rainbows across the lake.<p>

"Look what I did! Look what I did!" I squealed like a five-year-old. "Its a huge flying pony! Hyah!"

With a silent whinny the horse set off at a brisk run, hooves sending up sprays of water, watery wings flapping at its sides like two ginormous waves. It leaped-

And fell apart. I screamed like that same five-year-old girl as I crashed back into the now tumultuous water. Bubbles blinded me. For a brief, bewildered moment I couldn't tell which way was up and which was down. I hadn't taken a breath before falling and my lungs had started to burn.

Before the panic could set in, a strong hand grasped my arm and pulled me spluttering to the surface. I coughed the fish tasting water from my mouth.

"Look, I made a huge flying pony, she says. Oh yeah, you're going to destroy the world someday."

"What's that suppose to mean?" I said.

"Means I find you hilarious."

"Oh, come on, aren't you a little impressed?" I rubbed the last of the water from my eyes and took my first good look at him.

Link's hair turned dark bronze when wet and now hugged the muscles of his neck and shoulders in scooping curves. Despite the sarcasm, he was grinning at me, his cheeks balled up in preparation to laugh and blue eyes sparkling just like the water's surface.

Oh, mother goddess of us all...

"Course I'm impressed! Will you make me one?"

I blinked hard to clear the glitter in my eyes. Could a man technically be called beautiful? Jeeze, this couldn't be right, I was starting to feel ugly compared to him.

I pushed down these thoughts and frowned.

"You want what now?"

"A pony," he said, almost cheeped. "A _flying_ pony, as you said."

I splashed him in the face. "I ain't making you anything until you get rid of that attitude!"

"Aw come on! That was the most freaking amazing thing ever, I'll beg if I have to! Come on, Hanna, let me ride the water horsey."

"Will you stop it with the baby talk? I can say pony if I want to."

"Of course you can."

I splashed him again as he laughed, then turned to dive back under. He grabbed my ankle before I got far and pulled me back.

"Horsey." He said.

Then he splashed me back.

A water war ensued, and when one of the participates can make water fly through the air of its own accord, things get interesting. We somehow ended up back on shore with Link dodging my cavalry of tiny galloping water bombs and rolling behind me to dunk me into the water. Rainbows sprayed about us with the destruction of each of my tiny bits of art, and amidst it all Link laughed, surrounded by lake spray and curls of dark gold hair. I found myself laughing too.

"You're as pretty as a girl!" I cried, kicking up water.

"Take that back!"

"And lie?"

He dunked me again and I just managed to squirm out and flap away into deeper waters. Through a veil of bubbles knocked out by my wings I saw him diving down to me, smirk evident even through the blur of water. I shot up just as I felt his hands on my waist. Gods, he was fast!  
>He yanked us back to the surface.<p>

"Take it back." he gasped.

"Or what?" I flapped against him. Waves upon waves of water rushed over his head, but he held on tight to my waist. I could feel hot tingles where his fingers held tight.

And then they dug into my ribs.

The tickle seized me up and threw me into fits of giggles which only served to allow water down my throat. I choked.

"Stop!"

"Take it back."

"You're drowning me!"  
>"I won't let you drown. Say I'm manly."<p>

I wanted to ask why it was so important, though by the wide grin on his face I knew it wasn't. I could only laugh uncontrollably.

"Okay! Okay! You're manly!"

He let go and I sunk down gratefully, only kept aloft by the buoyancy of my feathers.

"Come on, pony fan. Lunch time."

"I'd like to see you make horses out of water. You should be calling me Water Mistress of Noble Steads."

"Fine. Mistress Pony."

I twisted and slapped a wing right on top of his head, pushing him into the water. By the time he surfaced back up, coughing and spluttering, I was paddling my way back to shore and reaching for the planks of a dock.

"I think its a charming title!"

I heaved myself up. "Oh shut up, what's for lunch?"

"Whatever you can catch."

I looked back at him in dismay. "Seriously?"

"What? It shouldn't be a problem for someone who claims to be master of water. Just bubble a fish out or something."

"But I'd have to see one, and we've scared all the fish away for miles!"

"Guess you shouldn't have dived in like that then, huh?"

Annoyed, but happy from our play, I stuck out my tongue at him and proceeded to brush the water from my wings with my fingers. Somewhere in the mess the tie of my braid had gone missing and my black hair wrapped in a mess about my shoulders and face, showing of its blue tones in the summer sun.

Exhausted, I spread myself out under the warm heat of the sun and watched as Link clicked together a nifty compactable fishing rod. When he got up and started to walk up the docks along the shores of the lake, I got up and followed him to a small, lifted island where he sat down, stuck what looked like a dried larva of some sorts to the hook, and flung it out into the water. I took my place next to him and spread out once more in the sun. A companionable silence fell between us and I let myself drift off behind the burnished red of my closed eyelids. The warm instinct in my chest hummed in content to have Link near.

At some point I was roused from my nap by the sound of another voice. I opened my eyes to see a man with a bulbous nose, watery eyes, and a distinctive slouch that didn't help disguise the pot belly that poured out from a distasteful half vest. I rubbed my eyes hard but the strange man was still there.

"-long do you plan on staying here? I mean, with a water show like that, you could really be onto something."

"Well, we didn't really have any plans. We just sort of came here for the day to relax." Link said, attention on his float at the end of his fishing line in the water. "We don't really have a place to stay close to here to do something long term like that."

"That's easily fixed. Give me, say, forty percent of the proceeds and I'll let you have my guest room, food included."

Link glanced at him, a thoughtful turn to his mouth. He turned back to me and, on seeing I was awake, smiled.

"Did you get that, Hanna?"

"Um, I heard something about a water show?"

"That's the gist of it." Link gestured to the new fellow. "Fyer here suggests you could make a decent fortune by performing water shows on lake Hyrule for tourists and visitors and the like. He's offering to give you his spare room for a percent of the proceeds."

Fyer glanced at Link and I, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "I sort of meant it for both of ya. Aren't you two, you know...?"

Both Link and I blushed and denied it, though another twinge of pain went through my chest. That reaction was starting to get really annoying.

Fyer, however, got a funny little smirk on his face. "Awfully suspicious reaction, but however." he turned his attention to me. "Hanna, was it?"

I nodded, praying that the heat in my face would go away already. Despite his odd, floppy appearance, his smile was warm and open. I couldn't get the sense of any sort of malice coming from him, and I wouldn't have been surprised if he had had a similar soul to Ilia's or the childrens'.

"How about it then? I hear you've recently been evicted anyhow and it would really draw in the customers. Business has been in the pits lately."

"Um," I looked at Link for any hints as to what I should do, but his attention was back to the float in the water.

"And if you're worried bout me being a creep, don't worry, the room I have has a sturdy lock to it and I'd be sure to give you the only key—not that I am a creep, mind you. Had my fill of women and don't care for anymore."

I guess I had nothing to lose. And making a living off of doing something as fun as playing in the water, just for people to see, didn't sound so bad. And since there was only Fyer, mostly, if the green man decided to do something again I could just chase him down. I could remember the strength my hands had held when tearing into the dragons, and it gave me confidence enough to know I could at least stand a chance to downing the green man, no matter what he was.

"I guess I could try it for a bit. Do you mind if I only stay for about a week?"

"No problem at all."

"And, uh..." I felt my face heat up again. "Do you like doing laundry?"

Fyer's tipped his head in confusion just as Link burst into laughter.

"Do I like doing laundry?" Fyer repeated, as though the question didn't compute.

"She wants to do your housework." said Link through his mirth. "It's a hobby of hers."

Fyer's eyes widened. "You're kidding."

I wanted to hide. "It's no big deal! I'll stay out of your way, and its your house after all."

"No, no," he leaned in towards me, as though to get a better look. "You seriously _like_ doing laundry?"

Right before I could really give in to my urge to vanish into the mud, he gave a happy little cheer.

"Please! Do all the cleaning you want! I hate that stuff—though, forewarning you, it ain't pretty."

I couldn't help but grin. "That's okay! Thank you!"

We made arrangements to meet up with him tonight to try out the room (he wanted the rest of the day to get it ready for me first as well as to write up a contract about his portion of the proceeds I would earn), and by the time he left Link had reeled up a long, fat, wriggling fish.

"You are by far the weirdest girl I've ever met." he said as he gathered up sticks for a fire.

"And you're saying this because I like to clean, not because I have huge wings and fangs. I think you're the weird one."

"Birds of a feather flock together." he said cheerily. "And lucky you I caught a big one. Ready for our late lunch?"

"More than ready, please."

I helped him cook up the fish. We didn't talk much, though when we did it was with the same friendly tone as before. He told me more about the Oocca and the city in the sky, and how he thought it strange that the city had been built with humans in mind rather than the small, chicken-like Ooccas. In return I told him of the story my father had told me of how our people had once lived in the sky, and we theorized that the same city of the Oocca may have once belonged to my people, and that the Ooccas took up residence when we abandoned it. We played with the idea of visiting it sometime, but I was still too reluctant to try my fate at being shot out of a canon to defy the g-force of the century. I still couldn't believe Link had actually lived through that trip, and unharmed, even.

"You can ask Fyer about it," he said after finishing his half of the fish. "He knows everything there is to know about the physics of canon flight."

And before I could think otherwise. "Why aren't you staying too?"

The pain in my chest twinged again, and I smothered it down.

Link shrugged. "I'll probably stay for a few days, I don't know. I do want to see how Mistress Pony puts on a show."

I groaned. "Do you have to call me that?"

"Yep."

"Why?" I whined.

"Because it's cute."

I pouted and took a big bite of what was left of my fish. I didn't want to be cute. I wanted to be gorgeous.

Afterwards, we put out the fire and sprawled out once more underneath the sun, listening to the hush of the lake waves. I could hear the breeze as a soft hush, like mother. The remaining dampness in my wings, clothes, and hair kept me from getting too hot in the sun. With full stomachs, I think we both drifted off. Every now and then I'd surface from my nap to see Link besides me, curled up on his side, blond hair lifting a strand now and then into the wind. I was relieved to see he looked peaceful, rather than tortured as he had the night before.

I could stay like this. Forget Ordon, this would be the best way to live. Side by side with Link besides a crystalline lake, eating broiled fish and napping in the sun.

As before when I slept near him, no nightmares or dreams plagued me. Just warm, comfortable, wonderful sleep.

When I suddenly found myself wide awake and staring up at a reddening sky, I tried to find what had woken me up. The sun was almost set and its dying rays dyed the lake a rich amber. A vague sense of anticipation welled up in my chest. Could something be coming? Was I starting to get a feel for the green man's presence?

I looked besides me to wake up Link, but he was already up with his arms resting against his crossed legs and his gaze dreamlike across the waters.

"Its almost that time." Something about the way he said it told me he was sad.

"What time?"

"That time when their world intercedes with ours and we can feel the spirits of those who left this world."

I folded my wings around me, concerned. "Why do you sound so sad?"

In answer, he just shook his head, and kept looking out over the water. I looked out with him, hoping to understand a little bit more of what he was trying to say. Maybe it had something to do with that twilight realm he had mentioned to me and the imp that had been his companion on all those adventures.

The warm instinct in my chest spiked in warning, though I shrugged it off as nothing. There was no reason for me to feel anxious. It was just a sunset.

"You know, that night at the spring, where you grew your wings...I didn't believe what I was seeing, at first."

"Understandable." I muttered, though the principle of reality hadn't even occurred to me in that moment. The pain was far to real to doubt. "Probably made you pee your pants, all bloody and freakish like that."

"Not at all." he glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. "I couldn't believe it because you were so beautiful. Unearthly beautiful. All that long dark hair and pale skin, and wings like some royal cape down your back. And your eyes, so bright blue, even in the dark. The moonlight and spring didn't help make it seem any more real."

Something within me trembled and I looked away, both delighted and unnerved by his words. "Be careful how you say stuff like that or I might think you're in love with me."

"I hardly know you. Besides, I already told you that I don't think I even know how to love in the romantic sense."

"That's stupid. Stop being so melodramatic."

"Yeah." he said faintly, looking back over the lake. "Yeah, I am being stupid."

We watched the last bit of the sun slip behind the canyon walls of the lake. The red and amber sky reflected down upon the rippling surface of the lake and spread gold light onto everything else. Link took a deep, slow breath.

"Twilight," he whispered.

Something flickered into being across the lake. At first I thought the shadows of the trees on the opposite bank were playing with my eyes and tried blinking to get a clearer view. But whatever it was steadily grew larger, coming for us, and the next time I blinked I realized it wasn't a what at all, but a her. Even at this distance there could be no denying the curves outlined by the black cloak that billowed behind her, or the long, bright orange hair that blended in with the dying light of the sun.

I heard Link's breath catch, and the instinct within me called out a sore, twanging warning.

"Is she flying?" I asked.

The closer she got, the more traits I found familiar. She had odd colored skin, bright orange eyes, and black, skin tight clothes. The way she held herself as she shot towards us, not leaving even the barest of ripples in the water below her, spoke loudly of the masked imp I had watched fight alongside Link.

Except she had become a tall, elegant, beautiful woman, and the skin tight, strange black clothing only served to show off the male dream her body was.

My heart had started to pound painfully and I scrambled to my feet. Link just sat there, looking as thought he couldn't believe his eyes.

She came to a graceful stop in the air before us, afloat with her hands to her side, as though to hold herself up in the air.

"I don't have much time," she said, and even her voice held a strange, tinging, inhuman quality. "Twilight will end soon."

"Midna?" breathed Link. I could see something in his face, something that made my stomach churn, but though he gazed on her in wonder, her orange eyes fell on me.

"Your god's spirits are terrorizing my people." she said, calm though a vague fire burned in her eyes. "They demand that we obtain the attention of their last child, a pale girl with black wings, black hair, and blue eyes, as well as the awakening of their true bodies in the land of light. They say they have already called you, and if you continue to ignore their calls they will force my people to drag you in to the valley of twilight. They beg your return."

"Midna, is that really you?"

She finally turned her attention back to Link. On meeting his eyes, the severe expression on her face fell. "Don't look at me like that, I can't stay, this was a one time deal from them."

"But you're here."

"And I need you to make sure this girl does something about her gods! No one has died yet, but everyone is-"

He cut her off when he reached out and yanked her to him. Before she could react he had her enclosed in his embrace and his mouth pressed against her purple lips.

Something within me just snapped. It felt as though my chest had caved in upon my lungs and heart, stealing my breath and making each beat a struggle. I clutched at my breasts, limbs growing numb, my vision budding with black stars.

"_You bastard!_"

But it wasn't Link I heard scream that, nor was it Midna. It was a different voice, one I thought I could recognize as the green man.

"You were suppose to protect her! You were suppose to keep her safe!"

"Hanna!"

This time it was Link's voice and I could feel his hands on my arms.

"I have to go now, Link."

"No, Midna, wait! Where do we find her gods?"

"I don't know."

A whoosh of wind brushed past my face. More dark stars were filling up my vision, morphing it into some sort of tunnel where I saw the darkening sky and the faded image of Link's head, topped with golden hair.

I felt the barest whisper of a touch through my numb arms.

"Get your hands off of her!" Link cried.

"No, you get off! You've done enough damage and if she dies I'm killing you next!"  
>"What? How is this my fault?"<p>

"She's your soul mate, fool! The gods gave her to you and now you have killed her!"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

The world was flipping. Warm arms were slipping under me. I thought I could smell something musty, like the scent of rotting leaves on a forest floor. The last of my vision showed me green. Fuzzy green. I was falling. It hurt. It hurt so bad. What was happening?

"I warned you, little fledgling. Why couldn't you have listened?"

It was the last thing I heard, and the last thought was that I didn't understand why he sounded so dreadfully sad.

**Just so you don't freak out on me, it does get better. But it's going to get worst first. It's the way of storytelling, so just huddle a little closer and trust me when I say I don't believe in tragedies. **


	15. Heartbreak

**Pretty please review? I will use my dark super sayan powers to reward you greatly if you do. **

Chapter 15

Mother had her hand in Father's, and her black hair blended in with the feathers down her back. Father's silver added the perfect lining to bring out the blue tints to her feathers and hair. They both looked out over the valley beneath our canyon home. I looked out between them and, as always, had to squint to see the mountains on the other side of the grassy plain. A few earth toned dots represented the horses.

"Once our people lived in a beautiful city in the sky," Father was saying.

But he didn't say more, because I remembered. We had had feathers spreading the entire range of the rainbow, but now we had only taken up shades. Gray, black, silver, and tints of blue. My mother and father had actually been pleased that I had been born with such bright blue eyes. They had seen it as hope for the future. Perhaps the color would return.

I remembered the bright feathers of the green man. Was he really not of my kin? Sure he had more feathers on his arms and neck and was half my size, but he had wings...such bright green. We must have once had colors like that.

"Of course, some of us chose to live on the land below, but there was always safety high in the sky, close to our parent gods, who loved us, and we loved them."

"Yes, once we lived in the sky," echoed mother, as though finishing one of her spells.

I woke up with the sound of my slow heartbeat and breathing being reflected back at me by the water in my ears. My limbs felt heavy, as though I had woken up in the middle of the night after days without sleep. I couldn't open my eyes. I wouldn't. Something tender throbbed in my chest, as though a wound had been inflicted there and would smart if I made the barest move.

Through the water, I could barely make out words.

"Stop calling me a fool."

At the sound of that voice, the pain in my chest smarted and I gasped. Link. Why was his voice having that affect on me?

Instantly the water pounded in my ears as someone stepped in and wrapped warm arms around me. I felt feathers embrace me.

"Don't speak!"

"How-" started Link.

I choked for air. It was as though a knife had been lodged in my breastbone.

"_Shut up!_"

Through the film of fatigue, I managed to open my eyes just barely to meet the acorn gaze of the green man. Something was off about him, though. He seemed to have grown, for he held me with ease, and the feathers had melted from his neck and face. His hair was a darker green, a kind that could almost be mistaken for a natural hair color. It made me think of my old friend in my old life who had dyed her hair that color. What had been her name again?

I couldn't speak to him for the pain in my chest, though. My throat stuck and my lungs felt sticky. The green man carefully turned me onto my side in the water as I coughed weakly. Even through my fuzzy vision I could see the splatters of blood I was leaving all over his wrist.

"So frail," I heard the green man whisper. "I understand that their must be a balance, but why did your weakness have to be like this..." He sighed. "Get over here, bastard, and keep quiet. You're going to do exactly as I say, you got that?"

"What can I do?"

The stickiness in my lungs thickened. I coughed harder and had somehow managed to curl about the green man. What was this water?

"_Do you want to kill her more than you already have?_"

Link said nothing. Through my coughs I couldn't hear his feet through the water before I felt a warm presence nearby.

"Take up her head, on your lap, and don't give me any of your sadass looks, this is _your_ fault."

I felt hands weave through my hair to my head. They shook as they helped the green man slide me through the water to a warm lap. My ears were out of the water now and I could hear more clearly. It only made me wish to be back under, for the sounds of air and breathing jabbed into my head like a mother of a migraine and I would've whimpered if I had the breath.

"Now, not a word. Pay attention."

Even the green man's words hurt. I couldn't see anymore.

But the warm hands were lead through my wet hair and down my neck, slowly stroking. Despite the gingerness in which he did it, Link's caresses eased the pain in my head. I took a shuddering breath. I thought I could feel myself sinking into the water.

I felt the green man tap my side, and Link reached there as well. I don't know for how long it lasted, but bit by bit, with the green man directing him, Link carefully caressed and stroked down my body, everywhere down it, and if I hadn't been wracked with pain and exhaustion I would have been either embarrassed or affronted. But his touch was like balm. The blood eventually stopped trickling from my mouth and somewhere during his smoothing of one of wings I fell back into an uneasy sleep.

The water was still there when I woke up again. I still felt somewhat tender and bruised, and I could still taste the blood in my mouth, but I at least felt the strength enough to feel out where I was. I dug my fingers through the grit at the water's bottom, so I had to be in some stream or spring of sorts. Gingerly, I slid my arms up enough to sit myself up and open my eyes. The mess of my feathers atop the water drew my attention.

The vision of water spun around me.

"Ah, fledgeling, you shouldn't sit up yet."

I rolled onto my elbows and knees and threw up streams up streams of crimson into the water. All I could see was my blood and hear my heart pounding fearfully in my head.

What the hell had happened to me?

When I woke up next, the green man was besides me, back to his normal size and over feathered once more.

"Let me help you." he said softly.

"What happened?" I'm surprised my voice worked at all.

"Ah, nothing much. You just almost got killed by your assigned protector and soul mate, that's all."

The malice in his voice, although not directed at me, made me cringe, especially when I started to vaguely remember. I could feel the knife in my chest attempting to prick me again at the memory, but something stopped it, like a fragile medicine or something.

"He didn't know." I mumbled. "My fault. And he's human, he's free to love whoever he likes."

"Don't give me that," he snapped. "Humans are well and able to have soulmates. They're even suppose to be able to sense them when they're around. That little boy is just a shallow walking dog in heat that will go for the biggest pair of breasts that present themselves."

I made to slap him, but my arm was so weak it barely made a noise, and I was just able to register the waxy feel of his skin before my arm splashed back into the water. "Midna is much more than that. She's his friend."

"I don't have the patience for your stupid excuses, my charge almost died. He will not—can not—be forgiven. Bastard."

I winced, but didn't say anything. I just didn't feel like it. My emotions felt oddly numb. Past the fuming shape of the green man I could make out the roof of a cave with walls pierced and weaved with beautiful roots. I flopped my head back to the side to see more giant roots, all carpeted in a familiar bright green moss.

"The Spirit Lanyru's spring," said the green man to my unspoken question.

"Why?"

"Waters that house a spirit of light have healing properties. Only creatures of twilight are exempt from its effect, no matter how much the goddesses or even the light spirit himself hates them."

I let out a shaky breath and laid an arm out over my face. "How am I alive anyways? You didn't make Link molested me or something, did you?"

The green man snorted. "Hardly. I just had him coddle you, show love, stuff like that."

I could feel my cheeks heating up against my forearm. "Uh..." Forget how. "Why?"

"Because that is your kind's weakness. You need to be treated more tenderly, loved more exclusively, and your heart carried with much more care than any humans, who can survive, not just one heartbreak, but many."

"Why?" That seemed like a foolish way to create us. If my mother and my friends had taught me anything, it was that heartbreak was just a part of life—human life, at least.

"Because there needs be balance, and with the power and strength your kind has in other areas, there needs to be equal weakness somewhere else to balance it. It's just part of the laws of creation. Light and dark. Soft and hard. Cold and hot. Pleasure and pain."

I slid my arm back down to the water. "If I sit up I'm not going to barf blood again, am I?"

"I don't believe so. You've been out for a week."

Amazed, I pushed myself into a sitting position. The dizziness this time was minimal. Just for sure measure, I leaned forward and focused on breathing.

"I'm alive..." I said. "I thought..." I looked over at him, suddenly a bit scared. "If my kind could be saved from heartbreak, why couldn't you have saved my mother?"

A look of alarm came to his face. "Woa, fledgeling, I didn't even think it would work! It was an idea born out of desperation, I've never heard an imprinted one whose mate turned from them ever surviving, mainly because, well, they weren't usually imprinted on someone so human."

"So why aren't I dead?"

He put his hands up to show he didn't know. "Maybe imprinting on someone human-like is different."

He sat there with me as I took stock of my state and ran fingers through my smooth feathers and hair. I felt remarkably clean and well groomed for someone who had been out cold in a spring for a weak. My fingers weren't even wrinkly. Maybe it had to do with my aptitude for water.

I closed my hand so tight my fingers gave a watery squelch.

"Where's Link?" I asked.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see his expression turn dark once more. "Far away from here."

"You didn't have the right to do that."

"I have every right, fledgeling."

"Hanna. My name isn't 'fledgeling.'"

The green man seemed to hesitate. But then, with a much softer, kinder tone, he said, "Hanna, he is of no use to us anymore. Now he is only a danger."

"No he's not."

"As long as he holds love for that shadow creature, yes, he is."

The twang in my chest at his words made me jump and instantly the green man's arms went about me, and he almost seemed to physically grow, expression on edge. A few feathers fell from his neck, but I was too distracted by a thought to shrug him off. The hug did seem to ease the pain, even if I still didn't trust him as far as I could throw.

"Didn't she say something about our gods' spirits being in her world? Midna."

"Yes, and she is correct. In order to disable our gods from rising against them again, the Hyrulian goddesses sealed away their spirits and bodies in separate realms—even realms that could never cross."

"But they did, didn't they? Link and Midna—and he went over there without a problem."

"That is where you are wrong. Shadow and light can never mix. Your brainless mate has chosen poorly."

I hugged my knees to him and swayed my wings under the water to distract myself from the uncomfortable thoughts pushing against the odd, protective wall around my feelings. Even though he was my soul mate, I felt shame in the rush of pleasure I got from hearing that. I shouldn't be happy about that. Link could never be with the one he loved out of no wrong of his own. That wasn't fair, just as it wasn't fair for my soul mate to be born as a human.

"So their bodies are in this realm." I heard myself say. "What do I have to do with that? It's not like I know a way to twilight."

"Are you saying you are willing to let me guide you?"

I grasped my ankles hard. "I...but the Hylians. It's not worth it if they get hurt."

The green man gave a loud, closed-mouth shout of frustration. He stood up, stomped the water, and paced around in a circle a few times before stopping with his hands in his green hair. "Look, if it worries you so much, just ask the gods not to. You're the last of their children and the one who would have awakened them, I'm sure they'd be willing to spare the cockroaches for you. It's their fault your soul mate was born as a human anyways, so there's another reason."

I perked up. A faint hope rose up in my chest. "They really would?"

He cringed, as though my excitement pained him. "Aw, man."

"Well?"

"Of course, princess, I can't lie to you even if I wanted to." Then with a hand to the back of his head and looking off to the side, "I can't understand why'd you still want to protect them after all this."

"What about Link? If I go following after you, won't the goddesses punish him for not keeping his word?"

"God, wouldn't that be nice."

"Oy!"

"I don't know! Jeeze Louise, you're really something, fledgeling."

"It's Hanna!"

"Okay, fine, Hanna, you should really be more worried about what the goddesses will do to you once you step out of the little lines of the safe zone they've painted around you. Is an aptitude for water really the only skill you've mastered?"

I frowned. "We only get one skill."

Suddenly, his irritated face broke into an excited, fanged smile that squinted his acorn eyes into dots. "You have all the keys of your race, remember? I told you so."

I blanched. "What?"

But his smile just grew and, at long last, he shrunk from the size he had grown to (something of the same size as a half-grown teenager), to his usually ten-year-old height.

"This is going to be a treat."


End file.
